Q: Why has it taken so long for PLM to be adopted?A: The education system is the biggest problem. Management understands paying people for transactions, but the nuance of product information escapes them. The value of information is not being taught well in MBA schools, which don't talk to engineering schools. People don't understand the life-cycle.

Q: Is PLM growing in chemicals and personal care?A: Yes, it is growing. It used to be mostly about packaging, but now it is more about labeling and composition of products inside the packaging.

Q: What are the key things keeping companies back from implementing new technology?A: The legacy systems are not upgradeable. Systems are so customized inside businesses that they can only upgrade by replacing the entire system. Also, there is a disconnect between engineering and the rest of the company.

Q: Can you define S&A?A: Simulation and analysis, historically called computer-aided analysis.

Q: Why do companies not use the full features of PLM, usually only the PDM [product data management] part?A: If it is owned by engineering, then it is unlikely to be used outside of engineering.

Q: What is beyond PLM?A: Nothing, except maybe in nuances. However, change is inevitable. AI [artificial intelligence] is just scratching the surface in having insight from all the smart-connected devices.

May 20, 2019

I had been using iTunes for many years, as it is the only good way in Canada to purchase music. There were other services, but some of them have gone under. Amazon.ca doesn't let us download tracks or albums, and eMusic.com has a limited selection.

Further bonuses for Apple's service are that Apple made its AAC proprietary music format open, so just about any music player handles it; no need to convert to MP3 format. Also, hidden in iTunes is the ability to burn albums to CDs. Also, BestBuy sells four-packs of $15 iTunes gift cards with a permanent 15% discount.

TIP. To burn a selection of songs to a CD, you first have to create a playlist of them -- either a selection of songs or an entire album. Then, right-click the playlist name, and choose the CD burning option.

But the iTunes software is a lumbering dinosaur, and I don't like multi-billionaire Apple pocketing 30% of the artist's revenues for itself. Five or 10% would be reasonable.

So I searched for other solutions. Some artists, I found, let you download their music from their site, but this too is limited.

Google Doesn't Like to Play

The only other solution in Canada seems to be Google Play, so I gave it a try. What a disaster.

Google Music desktop interface is listen-only (no downloads)

To buy from Google Music, I had to enable Google Music on my phone. I find its user interface odious, and far prefer the superior sound quality of Neutron Music Player (www.neutronmp.com).

Neutron Player could not find the newly downloaded tracks, so I went looking for them. No dice. I looked online, and found that Google hides the tracks in a hidden folder that is accessible only on rooted phones.

I've rooted my phones before, but found no great advantage, so I don't do that anymore. I kept looking (using Bing) to see if there were other workarounds.

It turns out that the tracks are visible if you save them on a device with a memory card. So I enabled Google Music on my tablet, directed it under Settings to save tracks on external memory (microSD card), and downloaded the tracks again.

This time the folder (Android/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music, obviously) and the tracks were visible but they were anonymized with names like 33.mp3. While the numbers are sequential, they do not match the song order on the album. (Google Music displays the correct names in its UI.)

What Google thinks the track names ought to be

So I spent time renaming the 10 files. Now finally I could put the album on other music players and/or burn it to a CD. The entire process took about a half-hour. So, never again.

I plan my future tactic as: Attempt to purchase the album direct from the musician, then resort to iTunes otherwise.

At least Google doesn't use a proprietary file format for the music it sells, although I suppose streaming is a kind of locked proprietary format.

Apr 25, 2019

A friend was moving and was throwing out stuff, when he came across his collection of Byte magazines from the early- to mid-1980s. Back then, Byte was the premier computer magazine, nerdy, and thick with ads -- until it was eclipsed by PC Magazine, which for a while was so popular that it came out twice a month, running over 1,000 pages each issue. Ah, those were the days.

I read Byte in those days as well, although never a subscription, just buying it from time to time from the newsstand. One of its ads and product reviews prompted me to buy Turbo Pascal, which was amazing for its time: $50 for an instant run (no compiling) programming language when a such a thing typically cost $500 and compiled slowly on our slow computers. I recall phoning the Borland office in Silicon Valley to place my order, and the receptionist apologizing: "It's crazy around here!" she exclaimed over the noise.

So what was important to computer users in 1985? We learn about it from reading the ads, not the articles. Advertisers targeted our hopes (for better computing) and our fears (over things going wrong) in a way the Byte's clinically-written articles couldn't.

The Agony of 1980s Computing

The #1 problem with computing in the 1980s was that it was expensive. We recognized in that time that there was much power latent in those chunks of hardware, but buying into it in the first place was a terrible decision because of the #2 problem with computing in the 1980s:

Compatibility. The 1980s featured an explosion of possibilities at the cost of spending a lot of money on a home computer system that was in danger of being incompatible too soon with whatever standard would eventually emerge. The explosion of possibilities was even more severe in Europe than North America, especially in England, which even to this day features Cambridge as the world center for new computing ideas. (Own a smartphone? Thank Cambridge.)

In the US, in the early 1980s, the Z-100 bus running the CP/M operating system on an 8-bit Zilog CPU was the closest there was to a standard for personal computers. Both Zilog and CP/M stumbled in the transition to 16-bit computing, which is when Intel's 8088 CPU and Microsoft's MS-DOS took over, running on IBM's bus design.

We forget that it actually took quite a few years for IBM's PC (August, 1981) to become the standard to which we still hold onto this day. Despite its use of off-the-shelf parts, the PC (short for Personal Computer) was very expensive. When I bought my own personal computer (April, 1983), I paid $6,000 for the computer (on sale at $4,500), a dot-matrix printer ($750), a box of tractor-feed paper, a box of 10 diskettes ($100), and the parallel printer cable ($100). I was paying for a computer that had much better specs than an IBM PC that would have cost me 25% more. Allowing for inflation, it was like paying $15,000 today.

What Ads Tell Us

So, in the 1980s, we suffered from the angst of investing in incompatible systems that cost a huge of money.

Flipping through the ads in the 540-age June, 1985 issue of Byte magazine, we learn that the hot topics were:

Floppy diskette security

Data modem speeds

Programming languages

The speed of dot-matrix printers

A. I.

The costs savings of multi-function boards

Robots

Smart homes

Smart terminals

There even was a small ad for a home robot. One technical article in that issue explained how to wire your own home automation network for turning lights on and off, and so on. The biggest advertiser? Borland.

Compare that list of concerns with what we are concerned with today, 34 years later. Advertisers assure us that we need to worry about:

Apr 23, 2019

As a professional technical writer who often puts into 12-to-14-hour days writing and typesetting, I rely on an excellent keyboard (currently loving AZIO's MGK 1-K backlit, aluminum-bodied brown-switch that is such a joy to use that it makes me just want to type more) and Logitech's MX Performance mouse; see figure 1. I use the MX, because it is a big, tall mouse on which I can rest my hand; has plenty of buttons; feels hefty; and it...

Figure 1: Logitech's (old) MX Performance mouse with its band of steel

... switches between freewheel scrolling and clicked scrolling. I keep that mouse mostly in freewheeling scroll mode, because it lets me get through documents and Web pages faster -- much faster than the 3-lines-per-scroll-click that most other mice offer.

But I wear out my keyboards and mice, and replace them every few years. The down-press of the scroll wheel on my current MX mouse no longer works (meaning I can't easily pan in CAD drawings), and so it was time to get the next one.

Perusing the available range of MX mice from Logitech online, I noticed that the top-of-the-line ones were (a) much more expensive and (b) looked somewhat different. No matter, the last two MX mice I bought were identical; this new-styled one couldn't be different. Plus, I was intrigued that it claimed to handle up to three computers at once -- intrigued, because I usually use two (and sometimes three) computers when I am in high-speed writing mode. Having one mouse for all three would be convenient.

I found a returned MX 2S mouse (see figure 2) online for half the usual $190 price (in Canada, incl. tax), and two days later it arrived. The first puzzle was that the box said Logi but the mouse still read Logitech. Looking online, I could find no explanation for the name change; Logi also is Logitech's stock symbol.

Figure 2: Logitech's MX 2S mouse

Bad Bluetooth, Proprietary Battery

The first worry came while unpacking it. A slip of paper offered to monitor my Bluetooth connections to help if there were problems connecting the mouse. Looking online, I found reviewers complaining about its Bluetooth connection being poor. No biggie for me: I don't use Bluetooth for mice or keyboards, as I find the slow communication speed too slow for my typing and mouse movement speed, and so I use Logitech's wireless connection.

I let the new mouse charge until its third green LED stopped blinking. Next worry: the old mouse uses a standard AA-size rechargeable battery; the new one uses a proprietary, rectangular battery block. I wondered how expensive it would be to (eventually) replace this battery; maybe it wouldn't matter. The AA battery in the current MX mouse hadn't held a charge for a couple of years, and instead of replacing it, I have the old mouse connected to a very thin USB cable full time. I really don't need a wireless mouse, but that's what gets sold these days.

I plugged the mouse's wireless connector into my desktop computer, and there was no reaction: no cursor movement on the screen. Aha! I wondered if I needed to change channels. Under the mouse is a button with an LED each for 1, 2, and 3; see figure 3. I pressed the button, #2 lit up, and the cursor began moving.

Figure 3: Underneath the Logitech 2S mouse

Options Replaces Setpoint

$190-mice no longer include the software needed to fine-tune their movement, so I needed to locate it online. (Logitech's Setpoint traditional software does not work with the new mouse.) I downloaded and installed Options, the new utility software; see figure 4. This is where the first big letdown occurred.

Figure 4: Yes we have no more acceleration

I normally set the mouse for fast movement and fast acceleration. I want that cursor to zip across cross my high-resolution monitor with a single 2-to-3-inch movement of my hand. But now I had a hard time finding the exactly-right-for-me Pointer Speed setting with Options. Worse, there was no setting for acceleration (how quickly the mouse gets up to speed and then slows down). Acceleration is important for when moving the mouse at high speed (it moves faster) and at low speed (it moves more slowly).

At least the Options software retained the double-click setting, which Logitech had foolishly removed from some editions of Setpoint. Yet, that is where the next big letdown occurred: I could not find a convenient button to press for double-clicking among the mouse's six buttons. (I can't map double-click to the scroll-wheel's built-in button, because that eliminates the ability to pan in CAD software.) On the old MX, the side of my thumb taps one of the side buttons; that exact position is no longer available on the new MX.

Side-to-side Scrolling Goes Awful

No convenient double-click was the deal-breaker, compounded by Logitech's misguided relocation of the side-to-side scrolling. Instead of being part of the big scroll wheel, the new MX moves side-to-side scrolling to its own mini-scroll wheel on the side of the mouse; see figure 5.

Figure 5: Side-to-side scroll wheel on the side of the 2S mouse

Side-to-side scrolling is a crucial function for me when I am typesetting my books in InDesign. It obviates the need for the scroll bar in the program. On the old MX, you push the big scroll wheel to the side, holding it for as long as you need for the other parts of the page to come into view.

On the new MX, you need to move the side of your thumb upwards (or down) repeatedly, repeatedly rolling the small scroll wheel until the page comes into view. This wasn't going to work for me. It was the final disappointment.

While using the new MX for the hour or so I had it plugged in, I began to also notice how cheap Logitech's very expensive mouse felt. The old MX boasted a band of curvaceous metal. The new one is all-plastic, with the two main buttons feeling thin. The new one is a triumph of form over function.

Later I heard from a Twitter follower that he too threw his Logitech MX 2S in the trash.

Summing Up

A pattern I've noticed repeatedly is that when technology in a certain area reaches a peak, it then worsens as the marketing department takes product development over from engineering. I first found this after buying a new cassette deck in the late 1980s, and being horrified at how bad new ones had devolved. Devolution has attacked the MX.

The Logitech MX 2S mouse is a throw-away:

Feels cheaply made, for a $190 mouse

Unknown future status of the proprietary rechargeable battery

Utility software does not offer acceleration

Side buttons are placed too far away from my thumb

Sideways scrolling irredeemably moved from the main scroll wheel to the side of the mouse

Solution

I went onto eBay and found someone selling the same MX mouse I had been using for a decade or more. Being a discontinued model, they are going for US$40. I bought two.

Apr 09, 2019

For 19 years, I appreciated my titanium Citizen Eco-drive with its perpetual calendar (see figure 1). Titanium, because I don't want the weight. Eco-drive, because it never needs a battery (a solar panel on the face recharges a capacitor). Perpetual calendar, because I never need to set the date, even in leap years.

Figure 1: Kind of like this, but in titanium

I tried a few other watches, and even some smartwatches, but always went back to the Citizen as it was reliable. Until it wasn't. One morning I noticed that its hands weren't moving. Now, this could be because the face hadn't had enough light, but one day in sunlight apparently powers it for months. This was kind of the last straw, as I had been irked already for some months by perpetual calendar no longer working.

What now? Searching for a replacement, I found that Citizen no longer makes any models with exactly the same functions my aging one has. Then I though, "Hmmm... what about my now-obsolete Pebble Steel smartwatch?" (See figure 2.) It dates back to ye olden days of 2015.

Figure 2: Pebble Steel smartwatch

I thought that resurrecting it might be an interesting exercise. Would it still run after Fitbit bought the Pebble company and abandoned this old line of smartwatches last summer? I found the watch and its charging cable, and left it for a day to charge.

As a basic watch, it worked, offering a digital watch face that displays the date, day, and time. Another built-in watchface offered to simulate an analog watch, but the coarse resolution of the Pebble screen made it untenable.

From my experience with Umidigi's basic smartwatch, I wondered how long the Pebble would last with all radio functions turned off. Recall that the second biggest drain to a smartwatch's battery is the set of radios they harbour -- GPS, WifI, Bluetooth, and/or cell. (The biggest is the bright, colorful display.) The Pebble, however, was the biggest selling smartwatch for a time precisely because its battery lasted about a week, due to its use of digital paper -- a monochrome screen that was always on, and only consumed power when it needed to change, such as once a minute to update the time.

With the watch fully charged and the only radio (Bluetooth) turned off, I was pleased to see the Pebble Steel last two weeks. Recharging took under an hour.

This was a possible replacement for the Citizen.

I wondered what sort of support was available for the now-discarded Pebble, and found that Google Play Store still offered the official app. I installed it on my phone, set up the Bluetooth connection, and you can imagine my surprise when it announced there was an update for my watch! I allowed it to be installed...

...and immediately regretted it. The two functions I actually use from time to time were disabled -- stop watch and timer. Messages were replaced by cartoon images that irked me. And, nothing else worked -- the connection to Pebble's online store was broken.

Eventually I found someone who had archived nearly all Pebble apps for the watch, but I couldn't figure out how to install them. The official Pebble app on my phone wasn't particularly interested in handling them.

Time passed. I used the watch on a trip overseas and delighted in how much easier it was than the Citizen to change the time for new times zones. But I would have loved to have a dual-timezone watch face, which I recalled having the first time I used the Pebble many, many years ago.

Every so often, I'd do another search for how to install apps onto Pebble, run into a wall, until I found Pebble Alternate App Store Helper (see figure 3). This awkwardly-named Android app guides you through the steps needed to access an archived Pebble server, and so installs apps and watch faces.

Figure 3: App for getting access to Pebble apps again

I tentatively followed the steps and was amazed that it actually worked. Be sure to follow all the steps, except for the optional ones. Finally, I got my multi-time zone watch face, along with alternative apps to replace the missing stopwatch and timer. Remember to access apps through the Watchface category if you actually want them to be displayed; watchface apps accessed through the Apps category don't work property.

The only catch was that I found was this: it was hard to make and maintain the Bluetooth connection between the watch and the phone. I dunno whose fault it is, but here is the inconvenient workaround I used, repeatedly:

Make sure the Pebble watch is waiting for the Bluetooth connection.

On the phone, go to the Bluetooth setting.

Hold down the entry for the watch ("Pebble 355D," in my case), and then tap Forget. This forces the phone to look anew for the Pebble.

Tap the ... menu button, and then tap Refresh.

Within a few seconds, the two devices should recognize each other- On the watch, tap OK- On the phone, tap OK

I kept having to renew the connection while setting up Pebble Alternate App Store Helper and installing fresh apps. But once I had everything on the watch, I no longer needed the Bluetooth connection.

Apr 02, 2019

"I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators," says the man who can't be bothered to show up when governments and regulators have been asking him about his company's role in distributing information.

When huge corporations call for specific government interference in their markets, it means they've identified weak spots in competitors. The best role of government, sadly, is to erect barriers to competition by generating onerous regulations, such as requiring 1,500 hours of training for hair braiding. It can have the effect of preventing small firms from growing, and large firms from entering new markets.

"Mark Zuckerberg calls for global regulations in four areas: policing harmful content, election integrity, GDPR-like privacy framework, and data portability." Could Zuck's proposals be designed as attacks on competitors? Here is one set of possible attack vectors:

Policing harmful content => YouTube

Election integrity => Twitter

GDPR-like privacy => all smaller sites, like independent blogs

Data portability => Google

For instance, new pre-election regulations caused Google to sit out Canada's upcoming federal election, while Facebook is all-in with the advertising during it.

And could Zuck be thinking of making the following proposal to the world? We here at Facebook are the only government-approved safe harbor for your videos (Facebook), your messages (Messenger), your independently-written content (Facebook), and your advertising (Facebook).

BBC notes that Zuck's proposals do not address the biggest problem with Facebook: tracking users and [and non-users] so that it can sell their personal data to advertising agencies.

Mar 18, 2019

Alright, here we are, waiting for the conference to start. A bit of background while we are waiting. This the first Bricsys event officially promoted by BricsCAD, and so is the inaugural one.

The agenda is to introduce BricsCAD to executives looking for an alternative to AutoCAD, as well as highlight the add-ons with which it works. The biggie is CADWorx, of course, the full-fledged plant design and analysis program -- primarily oil and gas facilities -- but also inside buildings (known as pharmaceuticals). Hexagon has already announced that the next release of CADWorx will include BricsCAD Platinum free, so that'll drop some of the AutoCAD license numbers.

Welcome

We are getting the welcome from Damien Harkin, the BricsCAD dealer in this part of Australia, and a bit of history. BricsCAD is short for "building-related interactive computer systems), and the first software was called BricsWork running on an BIM RISC workstation (1990), then ported to working with MicrosStation on PCs., which lead to TriForma 3D solid modeler, which Bentley Systems purchased.

Brics|Net Architecturals in 1998 ran on AutoCAD and IntelliCAD was a 2.5D modeler, but then the dot.com bubble crashed things. (Brics.net had gone public earlier.)

So then came the new plan became BricsCAD IntelliCAD (2002) but then in 2010 left ITC with 100% new code -- code-named DDCAD, named after DwgDirect libraries from the Open Design Alliance.

In fall of 2018, Hexagon PPM acquired Bricsys.

The base of BricsCAD is the ODA Drawings SDL. WxWidgets is the GUI so that it works the same on Linux, MacOS, and Windows. Next comes the ACIS solid modeler, followed by LEDAS geometric, parameters, and solver. On top of this are the APIs, with wrappers to make TRX the same as ARX -- all 26,000 calls.

Bricsys uses extreme programming, where two programmers work on the same code. Write the tests first, then write the code.

Migration

Jason Bourhill is a BricsCAD dealer and programmer in New Zealand with a background in mechanical engineering. He's talking to us about the pain from (unnamed Autodesk) CAD system with high cost, little development, restrictive licensing (only subscription licenses that phone home every 30 days, and licenses prevent you from using the software outside the country of purchase), running old software if you don't want to for forced on subscriptions, and so on.

BricsCAD is kind of the anti-Aut0CAD, where licenses are permanent, and you can even use old versions of BricsCAD in case that is needed for third-party applications. The cost is lower, and third-party apps and your customizations migrate over. And it gets a ton (tonne) of new features every few months.

Whereas Autodesk's BIM and mechanical software is not particularly compatible with AutoCAD, BricsCAD uses the DWG format for the base program and its BIM and mechanical extensions. Jason has created a spreadsheet into which you can plug in your own numbers to determine the savings. With one user, the payback period is 0.46 years and the ROI (return on investment) is 400% over five years, and a savings of $10,000 per seat.

What to do with the savings: buy more seats, new hardware, training, pay for customization, get third-party applications, and/or throw a party.

Heidi Hewett formerly with Autodesk is now with BricsCAD as user success manager. As the case history, we are going to hear about KCL Engineering, who specializes in making buildings safe against earthquakes. They use Revit, Tekla, and AutoCAD. But engineers use a PDF editor to mark up drawings, but needed something more. Instead of AutoCAD LT (due to inability to customize), they went with BricsCAD.

Here is the aspects they looked at to do the migrations from AutoCAD to BricsCAD:

And here is what happened:

While much of AutoCAD and BricsCAD is the same, there are improvements in how BricsCAD handles things:

Quad cursor (context-sensitive commands at the cursor)

Drawing Explorer (single dialog box that handles all named entities, such as text styles and section styles)

Settings (single dialog box that handles all variables, with an interactive search)

CUI (streamlined customization)

BricsCAD Platinum

We've finished our morning tea break, and hearing from Damien about how the new style of MCAD software is better than the old-style that needs a history to understand the 3D model -- still used by Pro/Engineer, Solidworks, and Inventor. It gets worse when trying to move a model from one system to another, in that all intelligence is lost.

New MCAD systems, like BricsCAD Platinum and Onshape, don't use a history tree, and so an add intelligence to imported models using the variational solver.

One of the hidden features in BricsCAD Platinum is the animate function that moves a constraint through a range of values, so that you can see how changing the radius of a cylinder head or an angle changes things.

Platinum is a bit of an unfortunate name, as it used to refer to the fullest-feature version of BricsCAD. But with V19 (released last fall) Platinum is the version that has all the MCAD functions, such as 3D parameters, and is necessary for the add-ons, such BIM and Mechanical. (The BIM add-on uses 3D solid modeling.)

Tip: Enter the inspector function to get a dialog box that lists the DXF data, COM properties, and LISP details of the selected entity. The Show Modification option alerts you when an entity is changed, and then shows the changes.

: (inspector)Select entity:

h/t Steve Johnson

Wrap It Up

We're ending the day with Michael Smith from Hexagon, the new parent of Bricsys. Intergraph is now 50 years old, albeit under the name of Hexagon PPM. "Little did I know as a small boy enchanted by the [NASA] rocket program, that one day I would be working for a company involved in it [guidance software]." They figured out how to send the telemetry (the rocket's position) data to screens in realtime -- instead of plotting on paper.

Intergraph introduced its first plant design software in 1978, and so is mostly known for this software. Their first 3D software was InterAct and InterPro in 1983. Even though Intergraph retired PDS (Plant Design System) 10 years ago, many firms continue to use it today -- but the software today is database-based and is known as SmartPlant 3D for mega projects ($20 billion). Most projects, however, are between $5 million and $20 million, so Intergraph acquired CADworx from Coade, which ran on AutoCAD and now on BricsCAD. Simulate the plant before constructing.

What was exciting for Hexagon is that there was a better platform out there than AutoCAD. Twenty products were evaluated, and then it turned out -- "undeniable" -- that Bricsys would be the choice.

Output (point clouds) from Leica laser scanning can be opened in BricsCAD, and then processed by CADworx.

The next generation of DWG is AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning), says Mr Smith. "We see Bricsys as the innovator of DWG products," especially in BIM. Bricsys has its own head of R&D and AI. But AI must be reliable.

Growth of Hexagon is driven by population growth, whether desalination plants or semi-conductor manufacturing. "Using all-in-one DWG to get our work done, instead of a mishmash of products. We don't leave the DWG workflow."

Hexagon thinks subscriptions are bad business, because it alienates customers; it's only there to satisfy shareholders in the short term. Hexagon offers subscriptions, but considers permanent licenses the way to go.

Mar 04, 2019

When governments rolled out social security numbers in the 1960s, privacy activists warned it would allow bureaucrats to learn everything about us. (SSN in USA, SIN in Canada.) End-times enthusiasts warned that this was the 666-like "mark of the beast," without which, the Book of Revelations apparently predicted, no one would be able to buy and sell -- buy, like food, and sell, like hold a job.

With sufficient government oversight, SIN numbers are now required only for financial transactions, such as holding a bank account and doing our taxes. Laws prohibit unnecessary use, such as by rental landlords and grocery store points programs.

Which is a problem for pan-national agencies like Facebook, who want to track us everywhere. A SIN is good only in one country and is illegal for them to use, in any case. What in the last decade has steadily replaced the SIN as a world-wide identity number? Our cell phone numbers (h/t Dare Obasanjo).

While many sites suggest (or require) that we enter our email address as our uid [user identification], the cell phone number is even better at identifying who we are, what we do, and where we go. The IMEI-as-SIN problem lept onto the front pages after Facebook screwed us over our privacy, again. (IMEI is the unique serial-style number assigned to every cell phone ever manufactured.) I think Facebook is averaging an oopsie, what, one every six weeks now?

Two-factor authentication (2FA) is a better way to keep the unwanted out of your accounts. The first factor is that you give the Web site a password; the second factor is to provide them with your cell phone number so that they can text you a query: is it really you wanting access?

2FA is better than 1FA, although it fails should someone get access to your phone, which isn't all that unlikely. Privacy Matters notes that the 2FA-failure problem get worse due to cell phone number recycling.

The solution is to have a second set of email addresses and phone numbers for 2FA use. It is easy to have burner email addresses because they are free, but it there is a cost to owning a burner-style phone with an active number. Here in Canada, the cheapest plan is $100 a year. Subrahmanyam Kvj suggests tech companies hostile to Facebook should hand out free numbers, such as from Google Voice.

Nevertheless, we can count on Facebook to turn our (somewhat private) cell phone numbers into advertising beacons. Once you provide your phone number to Facebook for 2FA purposes, advertisers have access to it within two week (h/t Gizmodo). Once you realize your mistake in giving Facebook your golden keys accidentally, TechCrunch found that Facebook does not permit you to completely hide it from friends and non-friends alike.

In its traditionally robot-like manner, Facebook says it's not sorry: “We appreciate the feedback we’ve received about these settings and will take it into account.”

Even when you avoid giving the mothership your phone number, Facebook gets its Instagram subsidiary to innocuously ask, "Hey, by the way, would this happen to be your phone number?" And then you find yourself handing out the same phone number to your car repair place and the electrician, all of whom may or may not be feeding the info back to Facebook.

As Facebook becomes ever more frantic at undermining our personal lives, I fully expect them to access the motherload of all cell phone numbers, WhatsApp. So far, they haven't, but only due to technical problems, not moral ones.

Antonio Garca Martnez says, "It's not just bad, it's dumb. The fraction of users that have 2FA enabled must be small, so the usage gain is minimal, while the PR risk is huge. Dumb trade-off. Assuming it wasn't just: team A writes 2FA #s to database; team B, 'Oh lookie here, new data to use!'"

Ryan Ford summarizes what happens with Facebook: “Give us a number to secure your account.”

Okay, here you go. “Cool. So we're going to use this for ads and make everybody able to look you up with it too. Also security, I guess.”

Feb 27, 2019

Last year, ANSYS released Discovery Live, a real-time FEA analysis program. Last fall, PTC announced it would incorporate the software in their Creo CAD program. In February, it was released as an add-on to Creo, called Creo Simulation Live. PTC and ANSYS held a Webcast to describe how it works. Here are my notes from the event:

- - -

Taking in this morning's Webcast on ANSYS integrating its simulation and analysis software into Creo CAD software from PTC, starting with the real-time Discovery Live. Over 2,000 are listening in on the Webcast.

If you thought Dassault Systemes was leading the new Industrial Renaissance, it turns out PTC is leading the new Design Renaissance. Also, did you know over 2,000 are listening in on the Webcast?

Over 2,000 are listening in on the Webcast.

Some 50 years ago, ANSYS brought the first structural solver to the market; since then they have been working on simulating every physical process. As well, they are trying to expand the number of people who can use their software from just a small group of specialists. "It is rocket science, after all."

Simulation is the last technology that needs democratization, says ANSYS -- and repeating a line Autodesk used at one time. (Some would argue that simulation is too important to leave for anyone to run.) A $500 graphics card today has more compute power than a Top-10 supercomputer in 2005, and that is the technology ANSYS uses in Discovery Live, its real-time FEA software.

"We sped it up by 1000%", says ANSYS, speaking of the analysis speed of Discovery Live, which uses the GPU, not the cloud; in addition, they gave it a simple user interface: "Simulation being used by every engineer." The next gen of engineers will say, "Of course" and take realtime FEA for granted.

The manufacturer of giant LED billboards describes how real-time FEA saves weeks in back and forth between structural engineers and the analysis team. "It's going to be a powerful product, once we introduce it throughout the organization." It allows engineers to play with what-ifs.

Using Creo Simulation Live to see if the I-beam used for static billboard hangers can also be used for a new design that rotates the billboard. In this case, a slightly beefier I-beam was needed.

Now we are getting more demos of real-time analysis by PTC in Creo Simulation Live, five of them in a few minutes. Probably the main benefit is that the model does not need to be prepared for FEA (meshing, cleaning up, translation), as is currently normal.

As I see it, the next step is for the software to adjust the model to eliminate the red zones automatically (areas where the danger of breakage is greatest). Right now, the engineer has to manually make the changes, do another FEA, make another change, do another FEA...

In some cases, "real-time" analysis takes a few seconds to calculate for a complex model like the one shown below, but still it is fast.

Disappointing that PTC did not discuss its future plans for integrating more of ANSYS software into Creo, as the company's ceo has already stated. Also, no Q&A session was allowed.

Feb 26, 2019

Last summer, Graitec Group released AdvanceCAD, an AutoCAD workalike. although I did not hear about it until another editor learned about it during Autodesk University. Here is an announcement from June:

Like other large software companies that sell specialized applications for CAD verticals, Graitec depends on AutoCAD to run their software. But over the decades, Autodesk undertook undesirable tactics like cutting dependent vendors from its API program (as happened to Cyco Automation) and switched to subscription-only licensing, which is at odds with developers whose policy is to provide permanent licensing (such as Hexagon). Or maybe the developers want to be more competitive in the marketplace by reducing the cost of licensing fees (Autodesk w.r.t. ACIS).

And so it comes as no surprise that large third-party developers think about underwriting an insurance policy on themselves -- as DCA Engineering did in the past -- as now Graitec appears to have. The insurance policy works like this:

If Autodesk were to cut us off at the knees, we will put on our AutoCAD-DWG-API prosthetics.

Why Insurance Policies Are Needed

I downloaded the AdvanceCAD software and found that it is based on IntelliCAD, no surprise.

Why did Graitec customize IntelliCAD for itself? The opinion of one insider is that maybe if Autodesk were to pay its dealers less to do the same amount of work, that would be perhaps a reason to bolt? Graitec is an Autodesk Platinum Partner, developer, and training center with 50,000 customers.

But now the link to the download is gone (h/t MD). No surprise, given that it probably shouldn't have gone up in the first place. An industry insider relates that Autodesk told Graitec to deep-six the AutoCAD clone.

(While the link from the main page to the AdvanceCAD 2019 download is removed, the download files are still available on one of Graitec's sister sites. If you downloaded it before, you can return there. I'm not saying any more than that.)

It is interesting to me that Graitec revealed the existence of AdvanceCAD in the first place. Might it not have made more sense to keep it a skunkworks project, as DCA Engineering did? Well, keeping the original AutoCAD replacement a secret didn't turn out so well, as the messy history of IntelliCAD's birthing relates. In my opinion, two factors are at play.

Graitec saw how three years ago Hexagon ($4 billion in sales) worked with Bricsys to port CADWorx to BricsCAD, and then last fall bought the company outright to replace AutoCAD. CADWorx users can keep on using AutoCAD, but the next release of CADWorx will include a copy of BricsCAD to save customers $1,575 annually.

The other factor is that Graitec is sending a message. Graitec is letting Autodesk know that it has a contingency plan in place, should Autodesk pull a Cyco on Graitec:

Feb 21, 2019

After Apple taught manufacturers in China how to design and build smart watches, the market over there became flooded with sub-$100 models. During Black Friday weekend, Umidigi offered their new smartwatch for US$30, instead of US$50 -- with choice of rubber or metal mesh strap. Apple charges $100 for its metal strap alone, so this was a deal!

I wanted to see what the very latest in smartwatch could offer me, albeit cheap. This would not be my first, but my fourth. My first was Sony's original one came out in 2012 and barely worked. A couple years later, and Autodesk handed out Nike's version to the media as their thank-you gift for coming to Autodesk University.

The Nike recorded steps and calories burnt. The rubberized band irritated my wrist. But worse,it became useless, after I determined I burned 100 calories an hour and walked 6,000 - 8,000 steps a day. It gave me the same report every day. And then Nike cut support for it.

I next bought the Pebble, which was space age in comparison, except for the monochrome screen. The battery lasted 5-6 days, it reported alerts from my phone, it reported alerts from my phone, it reported alerts from my.... After a year, I got rid of it, and then Pebble cut support for it.

So I blew the 30 bucks on a color model that was brand new. Could a smartwatch finally prove useful?

It took two months to arrive. I suspect it had not yet been manufactured when I ordered it. But at least it arrived.I don't like big watches, and so I was pleased the Umidigi was not much bigger than my Citizen Eco-Drive watch I've worn for 19 years now. The tiny Umidigi instruction booklet was written in legible English, but still puzzled me.

After touching here and there, I realized it had one touch-sensitive spot (at the bottom of the face) and supported two touch motions:

Long tap - to select a function or setting (going back a level usually does not work)

It measures steps, calories burned, activities (not sure that that means), and sleep time. It had the traditional green laser underneath for measuring heart rate -- which I found to be accurate. It can read messages from the phone, control the phone's media player, and the camera's shutter. It communicates with the phone through Bluetooth.

There is a separate app to download to my Android phone, which I downloaded, got frightened at all the permissions it wanted, and uninstalled it.

It comes with only three awful gaudy digital faces, no analog ones, because while the watch might be round, the display is square. The only customization it offers is to select a photo from my phone as the wallpaper on the watch.

Remarkably, the watch's battery lasts a week or longer. One reason is that it has just one radio (Bluetooth), where as one-day watches like those from Apple have lots of radios that burn through the power, like GPS, cell phone, WiFi, and Bluetooth.

There is one more reason why the battery lasts so long. It's hard to turn on the display, so it's off most of the time, even when I want it on.

Speaking of battery, attaching the charging cable is a challenge. Like with other watches, the cable attaches with a magnet. But the charging port is next to where the strap attaches, a tight location. So it invariably snaps to the metal strap, instead of the watch's body.

Anyhow, this brand-new, hot off the assembly line watch told me what that Nike strap told me years ago: I burn 100 calories an hour and I walk 6000-8000 steps a day -- not that useful, so after a week I took it off, and added it to my collection of watches.

Feb 19, 2019

While reviewing Charles Simon's book 'Will Computers Revolt' in the December issue of upFront.eZine, I conducted research on the topic of The Singularity. This is that moment when computer are smarter than us, and so it could make sense to transfer the contents of our brain to a computer. When paired with a robot, we could perhaps live forever -- or so goes the theory.

For some atheists, The Singularity is an article of faith, because they are not allowed to believe in any kind of afterlife. People who believe religions are valid have no such problem: they are pretty much uniform in their thinking. First you die, then you gain eternal life in some blissful state -- although some religions, like Hinduism, don't guarantee nirvana as much as other religions do.

So it was pretty interesting for me when I came across an article in Medium about religions trans-humanists. These would be people who want to gain eternal life before they die -- while they are still alive.

Meet the Mormon Transhumanists Seeking Salvation in the Singularity describes a group of about 1,000 Mormon trans-humanists who wonder whether they could become like God through technology and live forever now. (The article is written by a former Mormon missionary.) A now-controversial doctrine of Mormonism is that God was once man, and so man can become like God. These folks wonder if they can shortcut the process. Interesting: while trans-humanism uses technology to enhance human capabilities, the humanism part rejects religion.

So that got me to thinking. Imagine a future when, following The Singularity, trans-humanist atheists have their doors knocked on by trans-humanist Mormon missionaries, like forever.

I figure fantastical goals like The Singularity and flying to Mars are ways for people who don't like other people to avoid those other people, and then live as robots or on Mars until the people they don't like die off. Or something.

But then I mix that in with the chance that the people you don't like also becoming robots and living forever, or landing on Mars with you, and so instead of arriving in the heaven of your design, you end up in the hell of your making. That'd be annoying.

Feb 14, 2019

It is strange, there is much talk about digitalization, but nothing about how does it end? How do big data, virtual reality, generative design finish? As a rule, they result in the decision that a person takes using a model built in his head.

Apparently, creating models in a human head is not considered as a big problem, otherwise building universities would have a special course introducing students into the basics of semiotics and linguistics. What will it take? Approximately, learning languages at schools achieves the similar result - elimination of illiteracy. Future constructors will understand that there are no other tools allowing reach the foreign brain other than linguistic ones and will learn to express their thoughts in professional language of constructors - in drawing language.

Interaction between models

Let keep in mind three types of models.Subjective models are models in the human head.Digital models are models in computer memory.Linguistic models - notional drawings (including texts) on any flat surface – are transitional bridges between subjective and digital models.Consider options for models interaction.

Person to Person. The owner of a subjective model creates a linguistic model as an integral, structured, multi-page document - a set of drawings. This process may be compared to writing software using a high-level language. The main purpose of this software is to create and spread understanding. To understand, how a complex object is arranged, it is sequentially split into simple blocks. The upper splitting levels are intended for a general understanding; the lower ones are for the detailed one. It is clear that this is not a literal split like engine dismantling at a car repair shop. This is a conceptual analysis using step-by-step object detailing method.

The recipient interprets (compiles) the linguistic model as a whole. During compilation, the reverse process takes place - the object conceptual synthesis. As a result, an understanding - a subjective model in the recipient mind - emerges.

Thus, drawings by their nature are an algorithm for constructing a subjective model, i.e. algorithm of understanding.

Person to Computer. The owner of a subjective model sequentially enters commands as separate linguistic sentences using the command line, menu or toolbar. The computer interprets each command at the time of its entry. As it is known, interpreter-programs operate according to this algorithm. As a result, a digital model is formed in the computer memory.

The main purpose of the digital model is to verify the subjective model, perform digital experiments, and generate new data.

Computer to Person. Similarly to the option "a person to a person", the computer should automatically generate a drawing set. The problem is that this task is absolutely irrealistic.

The computer cannot independently choose an understanding strategy, assign steps of detailing, and determine the abstraction degree at each step.

There are attempts to solve the problem by embedding linguistic model elements (views being stored, annotations, drawings, etc.) into a digital model. The result is a hybrid model, or BIM-model - a kind of digital models.

It is believed that a hybrid model can be used as a unified environment, a reliable support for making the right decisions by all construction participants. For the design phase, this is a new idea, a new application area for digital modeling. Let check feasibility of this idea for a real episode.

A model (digital twin) of a one-storey industrial building was created (see Fig. 1). Checks were carried out, clashes were eliminated, and specifications were calculated.

Fig. 1. An industrial building model

The next step is an expert meeting to assess the project quality. It is a form of collaboration which should be based on the data got from the model according to the new technology.Expert opinions were different.Those, for whom the presented model was the only source of truth, assessed the project as excellent. However, some experts arrived at another conclusion - an absolutely amateurish project. All manipulations with its data were a waste of time.

What is the reason that the “source of truth” has turned out into a source of false?

In my opinion, the reason is the dubious worth of the collaboration based on a single model. Because of a defective model, collaboration on its basis leads to a dismal result.

Being inside the model, it is impossible to test its correctness. But having left the digital reservation, we will enter the world of normative documents, reference books, textbooks, and scientific articles. It turns out that collaboration in this world is based only on the knowledge (concepts) while the talk is carried out using only the language of drawings. The skill to play with toy blocks is not enough; it is necessary to “write” and “read.”

The ability to “write” allows a person to abstract his/her understanding of the building structure to the conceptual level - simple schemes. For the building shown in Fig. 1 the ordinary frame scheme will look like the one shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. An ordinary frame scheme (original design solution)

The ability to “read” allows making a realistic image of an object based on simple schemes (like ones shown in Fig. 3).

Without such schemes (Fig. 2 and Fig. 3), it is impossible to make the right design solution.

Designing is collecting of the knowledge acquired in different ways from different sources. Knowledge, as we know, is abstract and fragmentary. Each new knowledge may devaluate (sometimes, in an unobvious way) the previous one due to the incompatibility problem. To eliminate this issue at the final design stage, a single digital model of building should be made and verified.

If conceptual design solutions are found and properly formalized, creation a single model on their basis does not require high qualification and can be automated. This issue is already being solved.

Computer to Computer. Everything is simple here. If two models can interact with each other without human intervention, they may be considered as a distributed single model. With regard to a gradual decrease of the human role and responsibility in the designing process, I do not see such a trend. As 40 years ago, "disclaimers" is a mandatory paragraph of any license agreement for the software purchase.

Extracting drawings from a hybrid model

BIM software developers promise to automatically receive drawings of excellent quality. The following statement would be more realistic: the higher automation degree of obtaining drawings, the lower their quality. Fig. 4 illustrates the technology drawing obtained from the hybrid model.

Fig. 4. A drawing extracted from a hybrid model

It is an overloaded ("dirty"), hard-to-perceived drawing resulting from too textual copying of the model. It is not clear, for whom this drawing is intended, and for what purpose.

For example, a designer needs to obtain from a technologist a formalized assignment, which indicates loads and apertures for the equipment transportation. Instead of Fig. 4, I would prefer to obtain something similar to the one shown in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5. A technical assignment from technologist

Difference between a linguistic model and a digital one

Any tool other than its primary purpose has also to “teach” a user how to work properly. This means that the tool should be based on an ideology, which dictates the correct way of using and developing this tool.

A drawing board was the first generation of 2D editors.

Everything was perfect with the drawing board ideology. It took into account specificity of visual perception, understood indispensability of the paper carrier, set the clarity and definiteness of the intention above the graphical accuracy. In other words, the drawing board targeted a designer to create just drawings - linguistic models.

"Autocad" was the second generation of 2D editors. The history of this generation is an example of how an erroneous ideology leads a tool into a deadlock. Wrong orientation, misunderstanding of the drawing essence was the main mistake. Instead of a tool intended for the linguistic presentation of the knowledge, "autocad" gradually turned into a digital modeling tool, first in 2D and then in 3D. As a result, it lost face in a foreign field and is considered now as an anachronism, which exists only due to habit of using it.

What did the second generation editor get and what did he refuse?

Fig. 6 illustrates a digital model of a ship at an anchorage, Fig. 7 – linguistic model of the same ship. Let try to find differences.

Fig. 6. Digital model of a ship at an anchorage

Fig. 7. Linguistic model of a ship

The highest accuracy is the motto of a digital model. Correspondingly, objects in Fig. 6 are shown with a plenty of details. (Objects in Fig. 7 are shown notionally.)

When measuring the distance from the sea floor to water surface using a “ruler” in the digital model, we get the value 20. It is possible to extract additional parameters directly from the model, such as horizontal projection of the anchor chain.

All measurements are meaningless in the linguistic model since they will give unpredictable results. It is possible only to read what is written in it, in particular, that the anchoring depth is 20 m.

The filled polygon in a digital model (for example, an anchor) can turn out to be a set of merged lines.

In the linguistic model the polygon will remain a polygon when any approaching. Details of the anchor design may be viewed on a separate sheet depicting the anchor in a large scale.

If the image in Fig. 6 is a view of a three-dimensional model, any change in it will automatically result in changes in Fig. 6.

The linguistic model is completely independent of external changes. It does not reflect something; it declares what should be. Fig. 7 is a fragmentary knowledge, concept, standard solution of anchorage. No doubt, concepts should be linked to each other, but this goal is not achieved automatically. Any change in the concept may be made only after a profound analysis of the causes and consequences for the proposed change.

At first glance, an accurate “data-rich” digital model is much better than a linguistic one. However, everything has a downside.

You have to pay for the accuracy. We simply correct the value 20 to the desired one in the linguistic model when the anchorage depth increases; and this ends the editing.

In the digital model, it is necessary to raise the sea level, shift the ship, move the anchor, and edit the chain sagging curve.

Data abundance of digital models (for example, of buildings) ends up at the level of rebars, embedded parts, bolted and welded joints.

Linguistic models do not have boundaries. The explanation is simple. Designer's handbooks, typical projects, national standards are usual linguistic models; references to them are a natural continuation of a drawing. If desired, we can trace the structure of the object (for example, the anchor in Fig. 7) up to the crystal lattice of the steel used for object producing.

It is easy to determine in linguistic models, what the author of the model ensures exactly and is responsible for.

In a digital model, the boundaries of responsibility are not so clear. We are proposed to recover data from the model by ourselves, for example, using measurements. Those persons, who offer doing so, seem to be confident that:

The user is so proficient in the modeling tool, as the author of the model;

Aa measurement operation is so simple and clear that it is impossible to make a mistake when performing it;

The user will understand himself/herself, which elements of the model may be measured, and which ones should not be measured since the accuracy of their modeling is not guaranteed;

And so on.

4. Fig. 6 is a view of the model and, at the same time, imitates a drawing explaining the concept of anchorage. Such duality is dangerous. Automatic changes are required for the view, but they are not allowed for the concept.The structures of the digital model (assemblies, sub-assemblies, components) and design documentation (sections, sheets, schemes on sheets) are interconnected by the “many-to-many” relationship. One sheet of the documentation can describe many elements in a digital model, and one element of the model may be described in many sheets. The puzzling task to harmonize two structures is assigned to a user. Hypercomplexity, confusion and substitution of notions are inherent for hybrid models, and it is so-called a systemic propensity for errors. It was necessary to rely on hybridization because of despair, since drawings did not want to "die". Apparently, the variant of automatically model creation using drawings was not considered.

Conclusion

I foresee the question: where is the new editor description?

All the issues covered above are an attempt to clarify the common situation, to identify fundamental problems.

In my view, the principal task is to draw a clear boundary between digital and linguistic models. It is also necessary to ensure problem-free transition of this boundary at any place, at any moment in time. I see solution in the wide use of machine interpretation of drawings.

From the software engineering viewpoint, drawings are the universal independent format for exchanging information, the same as IFC, for example.

IFC language is more formalized but, as a result, it is clear only to programmers. The language of drawings includes pictures; it is less formalized and, as a result, is clear to any engineer.

As you can see, the task is to update the language of drawings, to add the missing feature - machine interpretability with simultaneous preserving its main advantage – human perception.

This is the main challenge of the next, third-generation of 2D editors.

Jan 22, 2019

My mother-in-law's laptop was getting so slow that even she was complaining about it. It's a Toshiba I got for her from Staples many years ago; it still runs Vista.

As I thought about how to replace it, the high cost of decent laptops put me off. Browsing black Friday sales I came across an offer for a reconditioned mini desktop. That was it! I realized that she never moves her laptop from the desk in her office, so a desktop would (1) save her lots of money and (2) be more powerful.

A Dell, it had excellent specs, such as a 2.8GHz dual-core CPU, 4GB RAM, and Windows 10 -- all for only the equivalent of US$105, plus $4 for shipping. (How can a company ship a heavy desktop computer for only $4 in Canada?) It's like paying for a license of Windows 10 and getting the computer free.

Monitor Connection. When it arrived, I found it included the keyboard and mouse, but no monitor. No problem, as I have several spare LCD monitors laying around. But this desktop, being older, didn't have an HDMI connector: just full-size DisplayPort and VGA. I ordered a DisplayPort-HDMI adapter from eBay, but in the meantime hooked up the monitor using a spare VGA cable.

Huh. The monitor was just fine using "just" VGA (a spec invented by IBM in 1987), and so when the $6 adapter arrived a few days later I set it aside. Maybe it'll come in useful some other time.

BTW, the largest monitor on a laptop is 17", but by using a separate monitor I can go 21", 23", whatever.

Starting up the computer, it then took hours to install Windows 10 updates. Even now, weeks later, there are updates that aren't updating. Oh well.

More RAM. But it did feel sluggish, so I went about fixing that. I happened to have two full-size RAM modules laying around that I had thought of throwing out; until this computer came along, I didn't think I would need the two anymore.

This being a business-class Dell computer, it opens with no tools. As I looked about the innards, I found the DVD drive was held in place with a couple of dabs of silicone. Oh, dear. On the better news side, I found that there was room on the motherboard for two more RAM modules; I checked the notches on them, and they fit! So, a free upgrade from 4GB RAM to 8GB RAM.

It was a bit disconcerting to find a jumper bouncing about inside the cabinet. I wonder where it came from. Its absence from the motherboard did not seem detrimental to the operation of the computer.

Switching Drives. The computer still felt sluggish, taking forever to start up. Fortunately, I had a spare SSD (solid state drive). Job 1 was to remove the existing hard drive -- not so easy, as it was kind of jammed into the mounting pins and sheet metal. I wonder if a slow, small hard drive has been quickly jammed in by the store that sold me the computer.

Drive Cloning. To clone the existing drive to the new one, I have an Inateck drive cloner hardware. Using it is easy but slow:

Insert the source drive in the A slot

Insert the destination drive in the B slot

Plug in the power

Hold down the Clone button for exactly 3 seconds (and not too much longer)

Let go, and then immediately press the Clone button briefly a second time

The blue clone LED lights up, and then progress LEDs show the slow progress

It took nearly an hour to clone one drive to the other. Note that this is hardware cloning, and so there are these limitations:

The destination drive has to be as big or bigger than the source. My destination was 240GB, the source 160GB

The clone is made 1:1, so a bigger destination drive loses any left over space; in my case, this was 80GB. Given that this computer is being used by my mother-in-law, large disk storage is unnecessary

Never mind, When the job was complete, I connected the SSD to the computer's power and data cables, and then wraped in a bit of cardboard. SSDs don't need to be mounted like HDDs, as they have no moving parts, but the SSD's metal body might short out something on the motherboard, so the cardboard acts as an insulator.

Booting up the computer, the BIOS noticed a new drive, and then booted into Windows 10 in a much faster 25 seconds.

So, now my mother-in-law has a speedy "new" computer that cost me nothing to upgrade, and that cost her just over $100.

Dec 24, 2018

I was on the most crucial of deadlines: getting pictures printed for an upcoming wedding reception. They have to be perfect. The bride-to-be stipulated 4x6" prints, white border, while the groom-to-be noted that Staples does a better job than London Drugs.

As the number of pictures was not that large, I started printing them on my HP photoprinter. I have counted on HP inkjet photo printers for more than a decade to output prints reliably. I buy whatever model has the second tray for 4x6 paper.

But this time, the output was awful. Shady areas in prints were muddy, often brownish, instead of their true colors.

Being short on time, I put the images on a spare USB drive and went to the closest store that did in-store printing. I waited in Wal-mart for the line-up to let me get to my turn at the machine. Waste of time, as Wal-mart does not do 4x6 prints with borders; oddly enough, only 6x6" prints can be made with borders.

Back home, I figured I'd upload them to Staples.ca. But their uploading software didn't work with Opera. So I switched to Chrome. Also didn't work.

After puzzling over this for a time, I switched from my desktop computer (running Windows 7) to a laptop running Windows 10. This time, the uploading software worked. Bonus! And Staples does 4x6 prints with borders. Double bonus! And they are half the price of Wal-Mart (19c vs 38c). Triple bonus!

A day went by, and no email from Staples saying my prints were ready. Then I read their fine print at the bottom of the ordering page: they promise to get the work done within 7 business days. Yuck! [Update: it took Staples two weeks to complete the prints, well after the wedding day.]

So I tried to upload the image files to Walmart.ca but that also didn't do prints with borders. I tried Londondrugs.ca, same problem.

So, back to my printer. Perhaps it was the paper, I reasoned. The 4x6 paper had been on the shelf for several years. I tried different brands, different paper stocks. If there was an improvement, it was too minor to be appropriate for a wedding reception.

After making so many trial prints, the printer announced that the black cartridge was running low on ink. I replaced it, and then the images printed perfectly. This irritated me, as the printer had waited too long to warn me of the problem.

So I happily began printing en masse, but after a while a print came out looking mostly magenta (pink). This time around, it was the color cartridge that was too low on some of its three colors.

Bad Prints Reason #2: Wrong colors result from the color cartridge running out of one of its colors sooner than the other colors.

I went to the closest store to get more cartridges, but Wal-mart only stocked #63 and #65, not the #64 that I needed.

So off to the other side of town to Staples. I decided to buy two of the black and two of the color, so that I would not run out, as the deadline got closer. Staples had just one of the black, but they have a policy of a $10 discount if they fail to have any ink cartridge in stock.

Nice, but then it took three employees to figure out how to make the computerized cash register give me the $10 discount. Nevertheless, the bill for three cartridges came to $139.

Back at home, I finished the print job. As my wife looked through the stack, she asked why these two prints looked odd. I immediately realized why: two sheets of paper were upside down in the paper tray, so the printer printed on the back. Worse, the ink does not dry, and so the wet ink got onto the backs of one other picture, as well as on our hands.

Bad Prints Reason #3: Printing on the wrong side of photo paper result in messy ink, because the back lacks the clay on the front that absorbs ink.

After hearing my story, the bride-to-be said, "They didn't have to have borders, if that would have made things easier."

Now it's been three days, and still no word from Staples. At least the print order cost so little I can afford to throw away whatever prints they finally let me have.

Dec 21, 2018

The Internet was designed for anarchy. It bypassed countries. Corporations were ignorant of it. Anyone with a modem could visit a telescope in Italy without buying an airplane ticket or look at dirty pictures without having to trudge to the nearby corner store.

(I still have Wired magazine issue #2, which featured masked anarchists on the cover, while inside editors mocked MacDonalds for being willfully clueless that some little guy had snatched up the macdonalds.com domain.)

With Web 2.0, the Internet became corporatized. Wired magazine, too. Those who once sang praises to the obvious goodness of The Network Effect today find themselves stumbling over stanzas 3 and 4.

2018 will mark the year Google and Facebook flipped from benign providers of information and communities to becoming Microsoft version 2.0, Evil Incarnate. Every week -- every week! -- new scandals splay across the the pages of Tech-meme as the technorati tweet their collectivist outrage over Yet Another Privacy Invasion. It wasn't supposed to have become like this.

So, it's easy to muse what-if. Like this thought from earlier in the week:

Google isn’t the company that we should have handed the Web over to.

True. But any other company that ended up owning the Web becomes would have become just as envious of our privacy; c.f. Facebook.

The thing is that young people don't know that Microsoft in the 1990s was headed the same way with its break-the-Web Internet Explorer browser and accompanying IIS server software. In the long run, the corporation's attempt to put the Internet under its heel failed, as incompatibilities introduced by Microsoft turned around and bit it. Be thankful for the folks behind Firefox who pluckily overcame the convicted monopolist.

During that time when it still thought it could control the Internet, Microsoft even had the first version of SSO (single sign-on) for its Web properties. Oh, the ruckus, the horror, the robe-tearing the day Microsoft announced it. It backed off. With SSO, Microsoft could have conceivably collected so much more data about each one of us.

Goggle learned from that experience, and so slid SSO in silently, incrementally, and efficiently. More recently, it attempted the same tactic with Project Dragonfly, which it had been working on since 2008, it turns out. Project Dragonfly, Google's attempt to slide into the censor-rich Chinese search market of potentially 800 million Internet users, was exposed from inside. "Exposed," because the CEO had earlier proclaimed it was morally wrong for Google to work with a brutal dictatorship, and some of his employees had believed him.

In any firm, a tiny portion of employees are sufficiently horrified by corporate policy to speak up/whine. Normally, they go unheard. Now that Google has nearly 100,000 employees, it suffers/benefits from that tiny portion achieving a voice loud enough to effect change. Doubly so, as Google find its home in the woke San Francisco area.

'Course what the "Is Google wrong for the Web" article is referring to is other Google employees making slight changes to YouTube code forcing Microsoft's Edge browser to run slow. Very slowly. This occurred after Microsoft trumpeted that Edge was faster than Chrome. It was Grade 8 boys letting off a stinkbomb in the Grade 12 jock change rooms.

Thinking back to when those of us who refused to use Microsoft software, while our non-IE browsers stumbled over Web pages, we smirk. The Googlers paid back Microsoft for fiddling with Web code so that only its IE browser could work correctly. But now Microsoft has given up on its own Web engine for Edge, and will switch to the Chrome engine. With Microsoft making most of its income from the corporate sector, building a different Web browser is no longer the way to win sales.

So Google racks up another win. But by winning, it loses. Facebook, too:

"Back in the day you had the city, with a million homes and secrets, each protected by its own lock," says Richard Fernandez. "To burgle the city you had to pick a million locks. Now the data is behind a server with one ginormous lock. You only have to burgle one lock. No wait, they'll sell it to you."

Dec 19, 2018

Taking in CIMdata PLMNews' Webinar "The State of the PLM Economy" this morning with Stan Przybylinski.

Stan reminding us that PLM is different for different industries. Companies that make automobiles don't care about the problems toothpaste makers face. Hexagon AB is of greater interest now that they no longer only make measuring devices. They have a strong position on the shop floor, says Mr Przybylinski.

Siemens PLM working on "generative engineering": generative design that will eventually be applied to more than just single parts, but to entire sub-systems in mechanical and electronic designs.In part, this is to support all the tech they've acquired for autonomous autos.

Last year's revenues:

Multi-discipline MCAD = $3.7 billion (like high-end @PTC_Creo )

Design-focused MCAD = $2.8 billion (like @Solidworks, low-end Creo)

CAM without CAD bundled in = $1.4 billion

AEC CAD = $3.6 billion

Many more billions in other areas of CAD. Where CAD vendors get their revenues from:

Big changes in IT affecting CAD:

Changes in license models, affects revenue flows

Cloud changing how IT is maintained

Mobile changing types of engagement

The other big impact is the heaving (my term) fluctuation changes in currency exchange rates.

Acquisitions over the last year:

Pages 2, 3, and 4 of acquisitions. I did not know Siemens PLM had acquired Lightwork Design.

Q&A

Q: How is Microsoft Azure vs. AWS playing out in the PLM space?

A: The adoption of PLM on the cloud to date is still a small percentage of the overall comprehensive cPDm segment based on our market estimates. More practically, many of the leading players are partnering with AWS and Azure, and some with both.

Q: What is the role of cloud computing platforms like AWS in the future?

A: Most of the existing solutions are available on the cloud in some form, from hosted to single tenant to multi-tenant. Some providers have stated that the increasing availability of new services from providers like AWS is decreasing the amount of new services they need to develop in-house to provide their complete solution. Going forward, there are emerging providers that are assembling their complete solutions from services offered by the cloud service providers, e.g., FusePLM.

Q: As you described CAM as standalone, is the Simulation and Analysis (S&A) number standalone or included tools owned by DS, PTC, Siemens?

A: We have separate estimates for all of the Tool categories for Dassault Systèmes, PTC, and Siemens, including CAM and S&A.

Q: In what category do you count software for PLM collaboration?

A: Depending on the provider, it could be in either comprehensive cPDm or focused cPDm applications.

Q: Are you aware of any major customers of Dassault Systèmes not wanting to upgrade to V6 due to architecture changes and migration concerns?

A: Yes.

Q: Will you include takeaways regarding PLM in the F&B industry?

A: CIMdata does consulting in companies interested in formulation PLM, including Food and Beverage (F&B). Some of the key issues facing that space are

Food safety, much in the news, particularly in emerging economies where they may not have many digital tools. This goes to both formulation and packaging.

Packaging itself is a huge issue as products go more global.

Access to global specifications for large F&B companies is a huge issue. Many companies use single instance solutions that can be hard to access from far-flung factories and value-chain partners. A minute or two delay means a lot of out-of-spec product.

Q: Do you think ANSYS is a competitive bidder to purchase PTC?

A: They could be. They are about the same size. To date, ANSYS has been more focused on the S&A [simulation and anaylsis] space and maintaining good partnerships with all of the tools players. Combining ANSYS and PTC puts more co-opetition in play, much more complex.

Q: Are we at or close to a tipping point for Cloud PLM to takeoff in the market? Which industries in particular are advancing quickest?

A: There are certainly more people expressing interest and more solutions available. I would point you to our cloud PLM study last year on CIMdata.com for more information. The full whitepaper may be downloaded athttps://www.cimdata.com/en/resources/complimentaryreports-research/white-papers. Non-discrete industries are moving faster. Their IP is less bulky and complex. Among the discrete it is more about supply chain and BOM, like high tech electronics than those wanting to manage engineering work in process.

I have been warning about AutoCAD malware since the introduction of VBA routines in DWG, which include the auto-open function. Targeting acad.lsp (and the like) was possible even longer before, but always required social engineering, as it still does today. - D. R.

In the new vector of attack, a file meant to protect IP is being used to steal IP. The acad.fas file is meant to encrypt AutoLISP routines so that the code cannot be borrowed, lifted, or stolen. (Normally, AutoLISP code is written and run in plain ACSII text, and so is easily inspected, reviewed, and stolen.)

AutoCAD limits its searches for support files, such as acad.fas, to specific folders. Outsiders won't know the names of project folders, necessarily. (There are some default folders.) So here is the solution, as ForcePoint describes it:

The easier and more obvious solution is to include the [malware] modules next to project files and let the user do the work by loading them and automatically executing the script along with it.

The social engineering part – i.e. tricking the user into opening the project – uses a set of lure drawings (in this case, apparently real drawings from already-infected victims) which may be selected to reflect the interests of the targeted company.

For example, companies interested in the construction business can be easily targeted with project names pretending to be concrete bases, metal alloy structures, or any element of a complex building design or ongoing tender.

These lures are often part of completely legitimate projects which have been previously acquired and become weaponized.

How It Works

Over the last few months, Forcepoint found 300 packages of drawings containing 100 versions of the acad.fas malware whose file attributes are set to Read-Only and Hidden. The .fas code sets system variable AcadLspAsDoc = 1, which tells AutoCAD to load the common acad.lsp file every time the operator opens another drawing (as documented by Autodesk). The purpose of the acad.lsp file is load additional programs in AutoCAD.

With every drawing opened by the operator, the malware learns about additional project folders, and then copies itself into them. Using AutoCAD's CDate (current date and time) system variable, the malware attempts to communicate once every 24 hours with its masters, a server running in Chinese -- and that's as far as Forcepoint got in locating the source.

How AutoCAD Protection Works

If you use AutoCAD 2014 or newer, then Autodesk provides protection in the form of

External CAD Manager Control Utility allows CAD managers to turn on these settings for all computers under their control; it is included with the AutoCAD installation.

The malware, however, gets around this security system by presenting itself as a legitimate project, defeating the usefulness of TrustedPaths and SecureLoad.

Who is Affected?

The malware primarily targets energy and automotive design firms located in China, India, Turkey, and UAE, but some in the USA are affected, as well. Forcepoint thinks that malware is introduced when a CAD operator plugs a USB drive into his machine, which he received by courier from an apparently trustworthy source.

The problem is difficult to solve on the software side, as AutoLISP and other third-party code is extensively employed throughout AutoCAD, from simple pull-down menus to running design automation routines.

The solution is on the hardware side. Design firms, who take security seriously, remove USB ports and DVD drives, allowing their computers to access only the in-house server. The in-house sever is not connected tot he outside world.

Dec 06, 2018

As I am lazy, I keep our outdoor Christmas lights up all year. December 1 each year, I plug them in, and set the timer for dusk to 8 hours later.

This year, however, a bunch of the bulbs did not light up, right in the middle of them all -- as my wife quickly informed me. Inspecting it closer, I found it was half a string, precisely. Sixty-bulb LED Christmas lights are built from two half strings of 30 bulbs each.

There was no way I was going to replace the entire string, so I went online to see what kind of solution might present itself. The first several search results made me gag: people actually suggested cutting out the offending half-string and patching in another one. Actually.

Dec 04, 2018

I am so thrilled with my ASUS ZenFone 3 Zoom that I cannot image a better phone on the market today. It has these functions that I love about it:

a huge battery (it lasts 2-3 days) in a slim case

two-lens camera, with the second lens having an optical 2.3x zoom

intelligent screen grab utility, important in my work as tech writer

relatively frequent security and bug-fix updates for a phone nearly two years old

ASUS written apps are good, especially their phone book app

oh, and a headphone jack

It has its faults. The camera API was written by ASUS and is slow to start up. I've missed shots. Two rows of pixels at the bottom of the screen are always lit (a problem reported by other users), and with last week's update a new bug arrived, in which the phone turns on its screen by itself and doesn't turn it off.

With all the hard work I've been doing this fall, I decided to treat myself. First I eye'ed the Skagan Falster 2 smartwatch, but the price in Canada remains stubbornly high, and the Skagan site in the USA (20% off for new customers!) won't ship to Canada. During Black Friday Month sales (yes, now here in Canada too), I eyed a number of new cell phones priced ridiculously low. But none beat my ASUS.

Then I came across the Blackberry KEYone for the equivalent of US$300 in the Staples flyer with 32GB storage RAM. Same price as that Skagan watch, but could I do better? A brief time later, I found it on eBay for the same price, brand-new, free shipping, but with 64GB RAM and 7% less sales tax.

The KEYone returns the famous Blackberry keyboard to a pure Android phone -- plus Blackberry's security software. That made it distinctive enough for me to splurge on. While I sometimes get hardware free for being a technical writer, I will buy stuff just to try it out -- like the awful stand-alone touchpad or the unused VR goggles. The phone arrived after week, after delays from the on-going rotating strikes by Canada Post employees.

The KEYone runs at the same speed as my ASUS Zenfone 3 Zoom (2GHz), was immediately updated to Android 8.1 (a 1.4GB download), has the 64GB storage RAM, and 4GB operating RAM. It takes two SIM cards (good for my international travel) or one SIM and a microSD memory card (up to 2TB).

More specifically, it is the BBB100-7 model that I ended up receiving; I didn't know there were varietals. I am not 100% sure how it differs from other models in the KEYone line, but I see that another model has just one SIM card but 6GB operating RAM. (I'd rather have the two and 4.) Some models are specific to certain regions of the globe.

It feels solid, but a bit on the heavy side and somewhat top-heavy, which is unfortunate. It has an aluminum frame and a rubberized back. Also has a hardware function button that I haven't figured out how to customize, and that I keep pressing accidentally due to its placement.

In terms of multimedia, the single-lens camera takes good quality photographs, and the sound of the music playback is excellent.

The hardware keyboard will take some getting used to. It removes some of the area normally used for the screen, and I am spoiled by the big screen on my ASUS phone. Sometimes the software keyboard appears as well, so then the free screen space is tiny!

I'm not finding Blackberry's security software particularly useful, but I might use this phone should I travel to privacy-unfriendly countries next year. I had already been using the Blackberry software keyboard on my other phones, because it is superior to most others.

Getting it reminds me of how time consuming it is to fine-tune a new phone. Google offers to transfer over files and passwords but does a surprisingly incomplete job. For now I'll just use it for multimedia and playing around with features I haven't uncovered yet.

Nov 21, 2018

PTC this week made the surprise announcement that it had purchased generative-design software maker Frustum for about $70 million. For this amount, PTC gets into generative design, which its competitors Siemens PLM, Dassault Systemes, and Autodesk had already broached.

Generate works in a Web browser and as a desktop program running in Windows. PTC also gets the TrueSolid volumetric kernel, talented programmers, and a customer base.

Between Frustum and ANSYS simulation, PTC ceo Jim Heppelmann is working on turning his company's Creo MCAD system into a powerhouse: "Creo is core to PTC’s overall strategy, and the embedded capabilities from ANSYS and, later, Frustum will elevate Creo to a leading position in the world of design and simulation."

The idea behind Generate is to minimize the volume of a part (to keep cost and weight down), yet to generate a part that can be manufactured by additive or subtractive manufacturing, but without any post-processing -- which is normally needed to prepare a CAD-designed part for being manufactured.

Jesse Coors-Blankenship: I can't speak for Siemens, or to who bid or not on our acquisition, but I can say that we chose to merge with PTC because it is the best fit to realize the company's aspirations.

Grabowski: Will Siemens still be using your generative technology in NX and Solid Edge, now that PTC owns it?

Blankenship: We will continue to honor our agreements to the full extent of them, and we will immediately discuss how to accomplish that with each other.

Grabowski: Is PTC also interested in your adopting your TrueSolid volumetric kernel in its software?

Blankenship: Yes, the intention is to fully integrate all of our generative design capability into Creo over time, while continuing incubation of the technologies we have under development that the public has not seen yet.

Grabowski: In the interview we held in October, you didn't seem to be interested being acquired, saying: "We are not interested in providing a traditional CAD solution. It can't be CAD, because that already exists. We are trying to shoulder into the market as the next generation of 3D design software."

Blankenship: I don't recall being asked about my interest in being acquired at the time. What I was trying to say in this quote was that Frustum has never been interested in replacing CAD or duplicating CAD -- that was not our business strategy. Our strategy was to pioneer generative design technologies and shoulder into the market.

Grabowski: What happened?

Blankenship: It was a blue ocean strategy. There were two ways for us to shoulder into the market; i.e., integration and point solutions. We pursued both paths, and our acquisition marks the success of this strategy, as shown in the monetization of ROI [return on investment] for my investors. Our IP [intellectual property] and team found a fantastic home with PTC.

Grabowski: In the interview, you listed a number of items that you planned to add to your software:

Blankenship: Yes. Generate will be enhanced to further learn from users and their respective use-cases. We are working out how we will deploy it and support it with PTC.

Grabowski: How quickly did this acquisition come up?

Blankenship: We have been talking with PTC for long enough to arrive at the idea of merging, but not so long that it was just talk. We love their philosophy on generative design, their modern pace, and track record of bringing transformational technology to market. They have a very impressive record of success and culture that embraces a seriousness around transformation.

Personally, I want to see our technology change the world. I want to see that transformation through. I think that can happen now to the full extent of our aspirations with PTC by the shared vision we have with their leadership who I am very impressed with.

Grabowski: What will your role be at Frustum under PTC?

Blankenship: I am very honored to become a Senior Vice President of Technology working from the new PTC Boston Seaport headquarters. It is personally a very exciting time for me and I'm very proud to continue to lead me team within PTC.

- - -

"With breakthrough new technologies such as AR/VR, high-performance computing, IoT, AI, and additive manufacturing entering the picture, the CAD industry is going through a renaissance period, and PTC is committed to leading the way,” concludes Mr Heppelman.

Nov 13, 2018

Getting ready for the Berlin Graebert Annual Meeting here in the Humbolt Box, a temporary structure in former East Berlin overlooking the reconstruction of the Berliner Palast (Berlin Palace) torn down by communists. The view outside the Humbolt Box reminds us we are in former East Berlin, with the modern tv tower next to centuries-old buildings -- and construction cranes as Berlin continues to rebuild itself.

The Berliner Palast at night

- - -

At #Graebert18 we'll be hearing about what's new in ARES, Touch, Kudo, Dassault Systemes DraftSight, Corel Software CorelCAD, Onshape, and third-party add-ons. As a reminder Graebert is the CAD vendor with:

Desktop CAD (called ARES Commander)

Mobile CAD (Touch for Android and iOS)

Browser CAD (Kudo)

OEM versions of all of them

APIs for all of them

The Keynotes

The opening keynote from Graebert ceo Wilfried Graebert gives us the history of this area of Berlin. The Palace was where the Prussian empire was centered. He notes that Graebert Gmbh has 160 employees, with 85 in R&D. Business is strong in Japan, so Graebert Japan Ltd. was created this year.

Mr Graebert says that his company is one of the last independent developers of DWG editing technology, and so he wants to help third-party developers secure their future. He adds that a growing number of developers looking for AutoCAD alternatives due to Autodesk's moves. Developers may also be concerned about Hexagon's acquisition of Bricsys.

Two corporations in Japan have more than 500 licenses of ARES Touch for mobile devices, using MDM.

- - -

Head of Greabert sales and marketing Cedric Desbordes is now giving us the rundown of software moving to the cloud. His argument is that CAD is becoming a utility like word processing, and that accessing drawings by cloud-mobile is the way to universalize access.

Mr Desbordes says Graebert's competitors are using a 'Winter is Coming' approach, where they think they have to move the whole desktop CAD package to the cloud. The other mistake is that releasing mobile or cloud CAD viewer is a sufficient strategy. Instead, the Graebert solution is both:

Both desktop CAD and mobile/browser CAD

Both view-only and editing on all platforms

Both permanent licensing and subscriptions

Both locations for files, local and cloud

One license for all products.

In general, subscription licenses outsell permanent ones 10 to 1, Mr Desbordes says, but some countries are still hardcore permanent licensees (other CAD vendors report that tends to be Japan).

Naturally, there are restrictions beyond the 30-day free use and if you are not on subscription or maintenance. If you are not paying the subscription for Kudo browserCAD, it reverts to viewing, sharing, and measuring -- no editing and no view-only links. Available as of January, stand-alone licenses of Kudo are $199/year.

OTOH, one license gives you access to ARES Touch mobile on both Android and iOS, and as many devices as you are signed into (phones and tablets). It is possible to get ARES Touch outside of the Graebert's all-in-one license by buying it through the Android and iOS online app stores. Corel Software's CorelCAD Mobile offers the same thing.

Graebert has integrated the browser-based Kudo program into the desktop ARES Commander program, so that the two work together, such as:

Accessing the latest versions of DWG files

Sharing DWG files with URLs

Accessing DWG and other files on the cloud in desktop CAD and online

Kudo supports the following cloud-based storage sites:

Box

Dropbox

Google Drive

Microsoft Onedrive and Onedrive for Business

Onshape

Trimble Connect

WebDAV

(Apple iDrive is not supported, except on Apple devices, as Apple has no external API for iDrive.)

"We have really worked on this synergy," summarizes Mr Desbordes. "Also, we don't force you to use one particular cloud service."

What's New in ARES 2019

Graebert's ARES Command 2019 gets a new block editor that creates and edit parametric blocks, tables to define states, complex and simplified states, such as hiding dashed line. These new customizable blocks with parameters and grips are not, however, compatible with AutoCAD's dynamic blocks, probably because Autodesk holds a patent on their version of variable blocks.

Also new in 2019:

3D modeling with push-pull

New rendering facility

Layers palette lets you rename layer names directly

Polysolids for wall-like entities

Area highlighting

4K support with larger icons

Chamfer edges of 3D solids

STL output for 3D printing

Layer merge with options

Digital signatures (only for Windows)

DWG recovery

The old system for plug-ins would not move to a new computer, and so Graebert wrote a new one with Graebert's account now bound to users, not the device. New plug-ins to be introduced today using new SDK include the following:

Render plug-in

UNDET point cloud plug-in

Maps plug-in (this plug-in is free to subscribers only)

The challenge is to handle very large point clouds, where AutoCAD is limited to about 10 million points, says Graebert. The plug-in from UNDET (named after leaf cutter ant, the most powerful animal in the world) supports 100 million points. It accepts data from many scanner brands.

We are seeing it rotate point cloud of 86 million colored points, nearly 2TB (not 2GB) on disk, loads in seconds. (See image above.) It changes colors, both real and fake, like by elevation, clips the points, and has a manager for scan positions. However, it is for ARES Commander desktop Windows 64-bit only.

ARES Commander 2019 will be released by Grabert in the second half of January 2019. You can try the new features in this pre-release version downloadable from:

Graebert supports more operating systems than Autodesk for desktop CAD.

Graebert is speeding up development through the use of their new plug-in architecture, allowing them to leap-frog some competitors in areas of point clouds, rendering, and mapping. You will find in ARES 2019 many more new features than in earlier years, because for the last five years they spent much energy on getting browserCAD (Kudo) right, in conjunction with Onshape. With the browserCAD problem solved, they can now accelerate base CAD development.

More updates to ARES Commander will arrive via service packs during 2019, including the following:

Revit underlay with entity snaps, etc

Revit export

IFC underlays to come later

More functions for customizable blocks

In fact, Graebert says that more features will come out in service packs than in the main release.

FxARX is the name of the new API, short for "effects." It is compatible with ARx from Autodesk, handles UI, custom entities, hidden line API, and jigs. It is due out with ARES 2019. Also new is the Commenting API, which consists of non-DWG data.

Graebert now offers an Enterprise version of all ARES software, for firms of 100+ employees:

Controls permitted cloud services

Mobile device management

Disable unwanted functions

Single signon

Kudo on private server

Pay only for actual users

Can disable things like sharing of links and PDF export; can lock user profiles; allow only commenting.

There is a minimum spend of US$25,000 a year, and carries a 25% premium on the cost. For example, 200 users of ARES Touch only or 100 of ARES Commander.

DraftSight 2019

Coming up next is what's going to be new in DraftSight from Dassault Systemes, who's been working with Graebert for ten years now. The two just signed a new agreement to continue the contract where Graebert works on DraftSight for Dassault. No wonder, as Dassault projects two million users of DraftSight by the end of 2018.

DraftSight 2019 will work with Dassault programs, such as:

Solidworks for FEA

Marketplace for finding manufacturers

Homebyme for populating floor plans

DraftSight 2019 will have many of the new functions in ARES 2019, plus a new API for third-party development. (Dassault had written its own API for DraftSight, but that's been waylaid now.)

Bigger news is that Dassault will start selling Kudo under their DraftSight brand name. It might be called DraftSight Cloud, but the name is not final. It will be released in beta at Solidworks World in early February. After it is out, Dassault will see how the mobile Touch app fits into their ecosystem.

It's a pretty interesting that Onshape is working deeply with Graebert, as is Dassault.

Nov 05, 2018

Theme music for the London conference of Bricsys 2018 is "London Calling" by The Clash. "Who's that?" asks the young-ish 61-year-old CAD journalist sitting next to me. "I bought the [double] album when it first came out," I replied, smugly.

BricsCAD Beyond V19

Learning about the future plans of Bricsys at BRICSYS 2018. It involves practical jobs performed by the CAD system on behalf of the human designers. Computer are best at repetitive, boring work; humans best at the creative side. Bricsys sees one assisting the other.

Bricsys sees the problem with Autodesk's dynamic blocks are being too manual, and so too difficult, and limited to 2D. BricsCAD V20 will instead have a 3D version that generates flexible blocks semi-automatically. Even add BIM data automatically using BIM styles.

Future versions of Blockify will do more than just finding simple entities. Future versions will handle assemblies and imports of tessellated data and point clouds -- replacing them with more appropriate entities.

Other things Bricsys is planning for future releases of BricsCAD:

Use AI to automate processes in BIM, 2D, 3D, mechanical, civil, more

Aim to add XR (VR, AR, mixed-R)

Adding Navisworks next

More commercial file formats, thanks to ODA

DWG is now 36 years old, no limit to it

Hexagon Acquires Bricsys

By being acquired by Hexagon of Sweden (which has a major presence in Huntsville Alabama through Intergraph), it makes it easier for Bricsys to take on the American market. If you are asking who is bigger, Autodesk has about $2.5 billion in sales while Hexagon/Intergraph/Bricsys is at about $3.5 billion in sales.

So, this is Hexagon's Trimble moment, when Trimble bought SketchUp from Google to get further into AEC, except that SketchUp isn't useful for real 3D modeling. Official reason given by Hexagon on acquiring Bricsys:

The big sales pitch is that you don't need to leave DWG or translate to/from DWG. "The flow stays in one format as you move from application to application -- at a fraction of the price. We will win one customer at a time," says Hexagon exec vp.

After Autodesk canceled his ADN agreement (he was the 2nd oldest ADN member) with no reason, Hexagon PPM exec vp Rick Allen got nervous about the future of CADWorx. Now, he says, Autodesk should be nervous, because he feels Revit penetration is not very deep, users dissatisfied.

The acquisition is closed, which means it is final. Here is a picture of Erik de Keyser’s new boss, Hexagon executive vp Rick Allen.

(Hexagon PPM is short for "plant power marine," which is what Intergraph became specialized at. "Became" because the company got its start as M&S Computing doing work on the Apollo moon shot of 1969. Which is why the Intergraph [Hexagon PPM] head office is in Huntsville, AL, the home to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.)

Future of BIM in BricsCAD V19

Bricsys estimates the BIM penetration is only 16%, split between Revit, Vectorworks, GRAPHISOFT, and others. This, ceo de Keyser feels, gives Bricsys and Hexagon a big chance. He hopes 20-25% market share in a few years time.

The aim, says Bricsys ceo Erik de Keyser, is to virtualize the to-be-built structure eventually to LOD [level of detail] 450 in 3D. BricsCAD V19 imports RFA (Revit family files, which are parametric blocks). When the RFA lacks parameters, then BricsCAD can add them with a single click inside the new Block Editor environment.

Doing semantic searches in BricsCAD BIM available now.

Site modeling with new commands in BricsCAD BIM V19: import TIN and then cut/fill the site to match the building's needs.

Here's the new UI for the BIM module of BricsCAD V19:

Future of Mech in BricsCAD V19

The new Animate option in the Parametric panel animates parametrics: BricsCAD briefly moves the entities related to the parameter, such as a shaft moving inside a cylinder.

Applause at BRICSYS 2018 for the real-time exploded view in BricsCAD V19. Dragging the cursor back and forth pulls the assembly apart and together.

New in sheet metal: Associative unfolding and curved junctions. Creating sheet metal parts from scratch right in the assembly view of BricsCAD V19. BricsCAD also displays both the original sheet metal and the unfolded version in the same window. One sheet metal design took three minutes, partly thanks to the semi-automation BricsCAD provides the designer. It can also design in conjunction with imported models, such as from STEP and Solidworks. Also seeing how sheet metal is created automatically from imported solids, such as corner reliefs -- and then unfold. "It takes two seconds!... Maybe 3."

New in BricsCAD V19 is a parametric hole library, with drag and drop insertion into parts. A future release will allow holes in blocks and assemblies. All this is done with DWG. Also new with assemblies in BricsCAD V19: arrays of parametric components and automatic exploded views.

All this is the new BricsCAD Mechanical, the new name for the old Sheet Metal add-on.

Initial BricsCAD User Group Meeting

Steve Johnson lead the initial BricsCAD User Group in London, at which it was agreed that the group should be formed.

If you have a bad DWG, the BLADE LISP editor from Bricsys lets you examine it.

Nov 03, 2018

Each quarter, executives from shareholder-owned companies have to face financial analysts in public, and talk about the last three months and a little bit of what to expect for the future. Here is what PTC execs told them. One significant item was that ANSYS Discovery Live is delayed being integrated into Creo to customers by half a year,

- - -

PTC reports fiscal year 2018 revenues of $1,252 million.

While IoT [Internet of things] didn't quite surpass PLM [product lifecyle management] in the full fiscal 2018, it was close and we expect IoT to handily surpass PLM to become our second largest source of bookings in fiscal 2019.

It took significant development work to build ANSYS's real-time simulation technology into Creo, but the project is on schedule and the initial launch of a version of Creo that has ANSYS Discovery Live simulation embedded will happen in the first quarter. Broader commercial shipments to the entire customer base will start in the second quarter.

We plan to integrate the full breadth of the ANSYS simulation suite into Creo over time.

We raised subscription prices by 5% on Oct 1. Our industry does tend to raise prices every year. [We] introduced new pricing and packaging for Creo, which gives us an opportunity frankly to drive people to higher price points and raise the overall average price of a Creo seat.

Nov 02, 2018

Engadget reported on a "smart city" experimental neighborhood planned for Quayside, a portion of the waterfront in Toronto, Canada. The headline read, "Google’s smart city dream is turning into a privacy nightmare." See https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/26/sidewalk-labs-ann-cavoukian-smart-city/. More accurately, it is Google's parent, Alphabet, doing the work through its Sidewalk Labs division, which is engaged in smart city work.

The story was sparked by a member of the planning team, who resigned after she objected to a Data Trust being given the trust to "approve data collection that isn't anonymized or de-identified at the source." In short, Google wants Quayside to be like your Android phone, where it wishes to track everything you do, say, and view.

Returning to the headline...

But, no. It's not turning into a privacy nightmare: it always was meant to be a nightmare. The no-privacy bug is designed into smart cities, right from the beginning, but it is worded as a "feature" -- or, more accurately, the 'smart city' feature. It it's smart, it can't be a bug. Why do you suppose dictatorships like Singapore and China are keen on smart cities? It sure isn't for the green aspect.

Smart cities is the side-effect of the envy of Google feels in seeing Facebook collecting non-anonymized data. That, and the techno-utopianism that bets billions that technology turns otherwise flawed humans into perfection -- the singularity, followed by the utopia.

And so, how can we be sure that utopia will persist if we cannot track every citizen's action, by name, to ensure he retains the Good Citizen Achievement Level. If we detect a citizen failing be an Eloi, then we are prepared to ban him to a Morlock existence.

Blockify command detects multiple copies of identical entities, and then replaces them with an equivalent block. For example, select a line segment. BricsCAD searches the drawing for all other lines of the same length, creates a block (of a line) that mimics them, and then replaces the lines with the block.

The drawing looks no different afterwards, but replacing entities with blocks reduces the drawing size in memory and when saved to disk, as well as improving opening, drawing, zooming, and saving performance. This works, because the block is actually a reference to a definition, and not an entity in itself.

For a practical application, use Blockify to convert general polylines in imported PDF files to blocks. Here is how the command looks in action:

: BLOCKIFY

Select input entities or [Find all groups] <Find all groups>: (Select the line segment)

NearestDistance variable toggles a dynamic dimension that reports the nearest distance between two selected entities. (This function does not work when three or more entities are selected.)

To use the nearest distance function, just select two entities. The distance appears on a blue dimension line.

Shortest distance shown between the circle and line

The distance reported is the shortest distance. You can edit the distance to move the last selected entity. In the first figure, I picked the circle first, and so it has the dot on the dimension line; I picked the line second, and it has the arrowhead -- meaning it will be the entity that moves. Type in a new distance, and then press Enter. This lets you move blocks or lines into position; it even lets you change the size of complex entities like rectangles.

When You Can't Move. When two entities intersect or connect, the distance is zero. When an entity cannot be moved, the dimension field is read-only and shown in gray (not editable). For instance, you cannot move two lines that intersect, or the entities that make up a block. (Go into the new BEdit block editing environment to change block elements.)

Distance between intersecting entities is 0, and cannot be changed

Hold down the Ctrl to select sub-entities, such as two of the polyline segments that make up a rectangle, polygon (see below), or even a donut! (On a donut, the distance is 0 and cannot be edited.)Hold down the Ctrl key when selecting the individual polylines making up this polygon.

OK, here we are on day 2 of the Bricsys 2018 London conference and we are just waiting for the BLADE session to begin,

BLADE is the BricsCAD LISP advanced development environment for interactively programming with the LISP programming language. BLADE was introduced last year with BricsCAD V18.

While we wait, here is an overview that I gleaned from yesterday's session for third-party developers:

BricsCAD V19 is is compiled with Visual Studio 2017 and uses Teigha 19.5

A public API is now available for sheet metal. It uses ARx syntax in BRx (API previously worked through LISP).

BIM API is u pdated in V19 with IFC export classifications, all BIM properties, spatial id, such as buildings and stories, associative and non-associative rooms, compositions, linear elements like beams and columns, and BIM dialogs.

BricsCAD App Store has been reworked to make it easier to find the specific add-ons.

BricsCAD Solution Build V19 will be released end of 2018. It is not AutoCAD OEM, but the end result is the same.

BLADE

Why still use LISP? It has low to zero maintenance, is compatible between releases (unlike C++), no compiler requires (faster development), lots of libraries available, and it good enough probably for 99% of users programming needs.

One project can be open at a time, where a project consists of two or more files. A preferences dialog box lets you set up colors and other settings as you wish. You can add your own keywords, and can be highlighted in a different color from regular keywords. Define constants, text scaling factor, and save multiple configurations.

A very nice feature is the side panel that lists the functions used in the current code. Click on a function name, and it is highlighted in the code -- and vice versa. The function names can be sorted in a variety of ways, such as actual order and alphabetical.

On to the next session, "The Future of Drawing," where we are getting some more previews of the next release of BricsCAD V19. First up, linking Excel spreadsheets to tables through data linking. It works only with Excel, alas.

The Dim command has been reworked to do semi-automatic dimensioning. As the cursor passes over geometry, BricsCAD selects the correct style of dimensioning, such as linear for lines and radial for circles.

A formal block editor is added to V19, which is accessed through the BEdit command or by double-clicking a blck.

Tangent and Perpendicular entity snaps controls geometry being stretched, such as resizeing an arc attached to lines.

I've been working with the beta version of BricsCAD V19 and found three commands that I feel (a) are unique to BricsCAD and (b) will prove pretty useful to end-users. Over the next three blog entries, I'll list describe them to you in detail.

Oct 23, 2018

When you start the command, you see this initial square. The blue square represents the floor area, the white outline is the walls. The wall thickness is fixed at 1/4" in imperial drawings and 5mm in metric ones.

As you move the cursor, the square elongates. You can enter exact distances in the dynamic distance fields.

When you click a point to indicate the opposite corner (and the size of the floor), walls appear; the height is fixed at 10' (imperial) and 3m (metric). The dimensions show you the distance from all four walls.

Click the blue + to add stories to the floor. The more you click, the more stories you get. (When you click the blue + too many times, you cannot remove stories.)

Draw more attached rooms inside and out by clicking a point inside or outside the walls.

To cut out a portion of a wall, click at the base of the wall. You did it right when a portion of the wall turns red.

Alright, here we are waiting for the official start of Bricsys 2018 conference here in sunny London. We've already had a developer session, where we learned of some of the nuts and bolts about developing add-ons for BricsCAD.

The big news, of course, is that Hexagon of Sweden has bought Bricsys, making it part of its PPM devision that also houses Intergraph, famous for being one of the oldest CAD programs ever. To challenge the "A" company (Autodesk) is going to take more resources. By being acquired by Hexagon (which has a major presence in Huntsville Alabama through Intergraph), makes it easier to take on the American market,

Keynote Address

CEO Erik de Keyser is on the stage saying "We are going to rock the industry. Again."

Attendees in The Brewery conference hall

He is reminiscing about the start of BricsCAD, which goes back to TriForma, which he sold to Bentley -- BIM before it was called BIM. And then they went to write BricsCAD, first based on IntelliCAD, and then rewritten independently of ITC. "Best decision we ever made" was buying the solid modeling from LEDAS.

Now hearing from Rick Allen, executive of Hexagon PPM, also president of CADWorx and Analysis Solutions. CADWorkx link is important, because all this began a few years ago when Intergraph ported CADWorx from AutoCAD to BricsCAD. In the slide below, the extra 180 employees come from Bricsys.

Why did Hexagon buy Bricsys?

They wanted customers to have a complete solutions. The most complex engineering problem today is the offshore platform, with issues like tight spaces and centers of gravity. Intergraph specializes in software that designs them, as well as oil processing plants, water treatment plants, and so on.

Intergraph/Hexagon is excited by the one-DWG platform provided by Bricsys, for CAD, BIM, and MCAD design in a single file format -- no translation. As opposed to Autodesk, who suffers from CAD (DWG), BIM (RVT), and MCAD (IPT), and the conversion headaches that result.

So the aim these days is to simplify the use of BricsCAD, and yet represent the details with BricsCAD.

Bricsys ceo Erik de Keyser

User Group Meeting

The brief lunch is over, and now it is time for the inaugural BricsCAD user group meeting. First question on the boar, "Should there be a BricsCAD User Group?" Led by Steve Johnson, who says Bricsys asked him to tackle this.

What should it do? Maybe discounts for members, reduced ticket prices for the annual conference, wish list, access to beta, exclusive training info, meet with developers; existing forum does a good job, so maybe a member-only section

Should it be primarily online? Meet once a year at the annual Bricsys conference, but then meet virtually

How independent should it be? Maintaining the independence of the user group is important to attendees.

Steven Johnson offers to lead the group initially, with a few others helping. The problem being we don't know what BricsCAD might be called in the future under Hexagon (Intergraph was renamed Hexagon PPM).

Building Information Modeling

VP of communications Don Strimbu is asking, Who thinks BIM is awesome? Who thinks BIM is too hard?

Four top BIM myths

BIM is just hype

BIM is just for the big buys

BIM will just cost more

BIM is just too much work

Bricsys vp of communications Don Strimbu

Now we are getting a demo of what's new in BIM for BricsCAD V19. The BIM module has a new UI that borrows from the free Sketch program, such as a toolbar-like ribbon and video-based help in a panel.

New user interface for BricsCAD BIM V19

BIMify is already two years old, the "AI" command that turns CAD elements into BIM elements. It recognizes beam, columns, components, rooms, internal and external walls, and so on.

Compositions is the most among the most BIM part of BIM, where the details of walls and floors/roofs are defined. A typical residential wall is gyproc on the interior, then 2x4" framing, insulation, plastic vapour barrier, exterior wall of plaster or brick or wood -- and the software needs to know which walls are exterior and which are interior. BricsCAD handles this.

Using BIMify to convert a generic 3D model into a BIM model

BIM V19 now imports @AutodeskRevit RFA family (component) files for use in architectural designs. This means that BricsCAD can now make use of the huge catalogs of Revit parts on third-party sites. Parameters and constraints associated with the RFA are imported. But when the RFA file lacks parameters, then BricsCAD can add them with a single click inside the new Block Editor environment.

Draw the basic shape with 3D solids, then use the new multi-slicing command to create the floors. Shell the model to create walls and ceilings, and then BIMify to identify them. Add glazing. New grid is either rectangular or radial; any curve can be the grid axis, then use standard tools to modify the grid's look.

The new Propagate command quickly adds elements to a drawing, such as columns in a room.

New Curtain Wall tool adds curtain walls, after you specify the material (such as glass), repeating patterns, and thickness.

Twisted skyscraper with curtain walls

BricsCAD BIM V19 imports TIN files to display the terrain, and has site modeling tools for flattening areas for buildings and roads. Use the outline of the building's base to define the cut/fill volume. When volumes are removed, BricsCAD reports the volume.

Editing an imported terrain file

The afternoon break is over, and now we hear about CDE -- common data environment -- which Bricsys deploys through 24/7, the new name for their online file sharing site that used to be known as Chapoo. 24/7 also handles project planning, editable work flows, multi-file viewing, and so on with unlimited users, each with different access rights. Cost is $200 per month but will be free for subscribers as of V19.

The example given is a 2.5-mile-long tunnel under Brussels being updated over a period of years.

Managing data with 24/7

For the future, notifications from BricsCAD, BIM collaboration format, and VR in 24/7.

And that's it for today!

[Disclosure: Bricsys paid part of my airfare, my hotel stay, and some meals]

Oct 19, 2018

Acronym alert! SPDM is short for "simulation process and data management"

Aras recently acquired Comet, software that automates the many steps of running simulations, such as meshing the 3D model, running a variety of simulation scenarios, and then generating reports.

Often in simulation demos given by CAD/CAE vendors are simplified to solve just one problem. In real world, however, simulation has to solve more than one problem. For instance, shown below is a simple model with four design objectives.

Aras says that Comet would handle the four simulation tasks in a single run. The Comet workspace is shown below. The large area shows the simulation process tree that is automated. Goals reached/not-reached are shown in green/red.

Simulation templates are created by experts in each of their fields, such as meshing and ANSYS. Once the simulation variables are set up, Comet runs the simulation and adjust the CAD model, as shown by th list of tasks (below) that the software performs. ARAS says this takes 14 minutes to run: Comet runs the entire simulation with no user involvement, until the end.

"If it doesn't appear in a PowerPoint, the simulation didn't happen," joked the presenter Tim Keer, Director of Customer Solutions (now with Aras, formerly with Comet) at the Aras "Future of Simulation" seminar.

Comet normally runs on the desktop, but a version is available from Aras runs in a Web browser, which is suitable for non-expert users who don't need to set up the simulation: just enter data and wait for the results. The browser version also hides proprietary rules from the user and customers.

Aras says they do no favor any other vendor, so Comet works with any MCAD system and simulation software.

Q&A

Q: Does Comet come with any simulation tools?

A: None, because it works with what you have, except we provide ANSA meshing.

Q: How does Comet work with CAD and simulation software?

A: To link with other software, adapters have to be written that read-run-write the data with Comet.

Q: When will Comet work with Aras Innovator?

A: There is no target date, but fairly soon.

Q: Can I access Comet now?

A: Aras Comet SPDM will be available pretty soon. It will be for subscribers only.

Oct 17, 2018

Here's something which has always bothered me. How can we say that IFC [industry foundation classes] is a BIM [building information modeling] exchange format? When I create walls in one BIM app, export them to IFC and then import the IFC into another BIM app, they aren't native wall objects and don't operate as them. If it really is an exchange format -- besides mere object shapes -- shouldn't this be possible? What am I missing?

- D.E.

IFC is a kludge.

It was first designed by Autodesk to solve the problem they created with AutoCAD Release 13's new DWG format that allowed it to store any kind of data -- and the new ARX programming interface that allowed AutoCAD to create any kind of object. These actions in 1995 future-proofed the format, but also lead to unintended consequences.

The problem became how to display that "any kind of content" which AutoCAD did not understand, such as custom objects created by AutoCAD Architectural and Mechanical.

Autodesk came up with three solutions:

Proxy objects that display custom entities in a dumb format that could be viewed but not edited

Plug-ins that mimicked the functions of ADT and MDT, so that the proxy object could be edited

IFC format to transfer the data stored in the custom objects between programs

The plug-ins became unwieldy as the versions multiplied. Autodesk spun off the IFC format to a committee to deal with. The proxy objects are still supported.

For the first many years, the IFC committee worked on exchanging data between programs, such as from ADT to a thermal analysis software, and then into another CAD program. But just data.

When Revit popularized the concept of BIM (2000 and following), IFC was seen as ideal as exporting the building data (information) it stored in its models.

With successive updates to IFC by buildingSmart, the format began to handle graphical data, such as walls and windows. IFC is up to version 4 now. IFC slid into becoming the BIM translation format by default.

So, you are right to be frustrated about the quality of translation, as it was never meant to do that. The problems you encounter are due to every BIM vendor defining their parameterized objects differently.

The good news is that the Open Design Alliance has begun attacking the problem of IFCs, writing an API [application programming interface] for that, along with the API for Revit files. The other good news is that other BIM vendors want this to happen, as well.

The reader responds:

Thanks for the info. I've been seeing US Government contracts written with Revit file format requirements. They state you can use any software you wish, but I don't know of any (yet) which can fulfill this requirement. Also engineers really love having all of the "I" in BIM available to them, so we're kind of stuck when you want to work with these firms.

Oct 12, 2018

Frustum is one of a new spate of CAD companies that are deploying the latest mathematics and computing technology to leap ahead of established players and find themselves a niche. In the case of Frustum, their Generate software generates optimal 3D shapes; until now, it has run only in Web browsers.

The company this week held a Webinar to introduce the desktop version of Generate (for Windows only). I listened in and grabbed some screenshots.

- - -

The Generate software determines the best design of a part based on input, such as stresses and connection points. What's new in the desktop Windows version is interactive modeling, and it is more secure than the cloud.

It has options for optimizing the shape for milling, 3D printing, and casting. These affect the shape in different ways. For instance, designed for casting means the shape must be able to be pulled out of a mold, while optimized for 3D printing means it should have a flat bottom.

Here is the user interface of Generate for Windows.

Generate for Windows can run on a laptop, as was done for the Webinar. But it will run faster on a multi-core desktop computer with a GPU. Only nVdidia graphics boards are supported. Real-time FEA (finite element analysis) does not mandate a GPU. GPU is optionally enabled if the machine has an NVIDIA graphics card.

A future release will add lattice design to Generate for Windows.

Output from Generate is an STL file. A future version might output a b-rep for input to CAD, but it is not a simple problem to solve.

Demo version cannot be simply downloaded from Frustum's Web site. You have to contact info@frustum.com for a trial version.

Cambashi is a CAD market analysis firm out of England, and this week it held a Webinar intriguingly named "Assessing Investment Opportunities in the CAE market." (The company also provides consulting and training.) I listened in to hear what they had to say.

- - -

One of the first stats blew me away: There are 470 non-EDA companies providing 2D and 3D CAE and physics simulation software. The biggest names are listed below.

As the Cambashi Webinar was about the opportunities in acquiring a CAE firm, one obvious purchaser that jumped out at me is Bricsys, which could use analysis to compliment its advanced design capabilities.

Here is a slide on investment scenarios:

Cambashi maintains a dashboard that tracks many CAE companies, which presumably would help you decide which CAE vendor to acquire, based on criteria like these:

Growth rate of the CAE vendors

Specialty areas, such as which kinds of simulation and analysis they do

Oct 11, 2018

MagicLeap is a secretive company that amassed a crazy amount of money over several years -- $2.5 billion in investor's money -- before finally getting around to showing its product a few months ago. This week, it held its first conference for third-party developers.

This was an important event: what can it show for a couple of billion bucks? Two CAD vendors made brief presentation towards the end of the three hours, Trimble for SketchUp and Onshape.

Fascinating spin from MagicLeap's first developer conference. Company execs claiming media like radio and tv (which brought people together) actually were social failures, but VR goggles (which by their very nature are isolating) are inclusive.

Despite the "We Are the [liberal progressive] World" vibe from the MagicLeap developer conference, all the [video] demos show lonely people stabbing their arms in their empty-of-other-humans rooms.

New open-source-based LuminOS from MagicLeap to offers fastest meshing available.

Software roadmap from MagicLeap, looking like development will continue into 2019.

Company, which pocked $2.5 billion in funding, is offering $200,000 for bug bounties.

It's VRML time all over again. MagicLeap wants to create spatial (ie, 3D) Web experiences through their own new browser, Helio and declarative HTML library, Prismatic. Spatial Web to solve on-line shopping problems.

"MagicLeap has its own editorial point of view, and putting [MagicLeap] Studios name on content helps us reflect what the company believes in. These are the stories WE want to tell." Content created by Create software, to be delivered next year.

Science fiction author Neal Stephenson of Goat Labs showing the PHILTR, which was pilfered from ComicCon. He says it works with MagicLeap but doesn't say how.

2.5 hours into watching the MagicLeap developer conference and I still figure VR will be as successful in homes as 3D TVs.

Slide shows percentage of kinds of apps being made for Magicleap. Is CAD part of the Productivity type?

Home shopping is back at MagicLeap, which has 10 million shopping items. Pull items from their 3D Web browser into your space.

First mention of CAD is SketchUp from Trimble. Trimble is talking about mixed reality made of hardware and software to capture the physical environment and manage engineering projects. SketchUp has 30 million users and its Warehouse is probably the largest 3D library.

Onshape is now on. "I believe we will see CAD move to a new generation, on a new platform: Mixed reality and 3D CAD."

The new Onshape 3D CAD app for @MagicLeap is announced and shown in a video. Use markup tool, and then see the changes in real-time. "This is live editing of CAD."

Although not made explicit, the MCAD editing is done with the Onshape app running in a Web browser or on a tablet -- not by the MagicLeap interface. The 3D view is updated after the editing change is made.

Sep 08, 2018

When I want to send email from outside of Canada, the outgoing email is filed to Outgoing, the purgatory mailbox. It is never sent. The problem occurs whether I want to send email from my Android phone or my Windows laptop, using a desktop client like Eudora or eM Client, or mobile app, like AquaMail. Who blocks the email, and why, I don't know.

I asked my ISP's tech support. They had no clue, suggesting that I instead use their Webmail client, which is only slightly worse than Gmail's Web client. (The Webmail client is, admittedly, effective in overcoming geographic boundaries, but awkward to use.)

Fool 'em with VPNs

The solution is to use a VPN, a virtual private network, which fools everybody on the Internet and all software on your computer that you are in a different country. There are numerous VPNs that provide a basic service for free. I use TunnelBear, which offers 500MB a month of data transfer at no cost; paying for TunnelBear gets me unlimited data and use on up to five computers at once. (I use it at home on all our computers as a extra layer of protection.)

So, download and install a VPN like TunnelBear (https://www.tunnelbear.com/download), and then specify your home country, the one where your ISP is located. In my case, Canada. Problem solved.

If you have emails stuck in the Outgoing box, then you'll need to resend them. In some cases, the email client is smart enough to send them once it senses that you are "back in Canada." In other cases, you need to manually resend them, which might involve moving them to the Inbox, forwarding them as an original, or some other tactic.

I use TunnelBear to watch videos, such as live news events, that are geographically locked. Some jurisdictions, however, like China, and some software giants, like Netflix, block VPNs. So, there is an alternative.

The Alternative to VPNs

There is an alternative solution, involving a "visual" VPN like TeamViewer (https://www.teamviewer.com/en/download/windows). It displays on your local screen (laptop or Android device) what is displayed on the distant computer to which you connect. I primarily use this software to support the computers used by elderly relatives. It lets me see what is happening on their computer screens, operate the software, and even reboot their computers.

When I am abroad, I use TeamViewer to access my desktop computer back home. I've used it sometimes to transfer files that I forgot to take along, but mostly I use it to access my Eudora email client running on my primary desktop computer. I go through the incoming emails, answering them, and filing them into mailboxes.

It is possible to watch geographically-locked and VPN-blocked video with TeamViewer, but the frame rate is slow. It works, because as far as Netflix is concerned, the video is being watched on a geographically-correct computer. I don't know if TeamViewer is effective at evading the Great Red Firewall imposed by China.

Jul 24, 2018

Gabriela Borges (financial analyst): On Discovery Live [real-time FEA from ANSYS], I’m curious on the feedback that you've gotten since the announcement, and your understanding of the composition of PTCs CAD base, do you have a sense for what percentage or what types of customers within the CAD base would be interested in buying through the Discovery Life partnership?

Jim Heppelmann (PTC ceo): To simplify things for the benefit of everybody, think of Discovery Life being like a spell checker in a word processing document. You used to write a lot of text and then you’d stop writing and you would spell check and you’ll find all the mistakes. You’ll fix them all and then go back to writing more new text.

And now like in Microsoft Word that spell check is running all the time and as you're typing or misspelling a word, it's already showing you that doesn't look like a word to me and if you make a capitalization mistake its correcting itself.

So now take that kind of metaphor if you will and bring it over to CAD. We used to design, design, design, stop designing and go simulate find a whole bunch of problems, try to fix them all and then go back to designing.

Now as you design Discovery Live is watching over your shoulder and, with literally every change you make, it tells you what are the implications of that change.

But I want to say is who wouldn't want a spell checker in Microsoft Word. Anybody on the phone call here that have no use for a spell checker?

So I think that everybody wants it, every single user and probably especially the ones that are creating geometry would benefit from this capability. Now we would have to figure out its kind of amazing thing and we don't know how fast and how far the penetration will go, but I will tell you, we should end up with a very high penetration of this technology into our CAD base. I would be surprised if that didn’t happen.

Jul 23, 2018

One of the most important events for me at the annual COFES (Congress on the future of engineering software) conference is Tech Suites. This is a series of briefings that are held by vendors who sponsor the congress. I find them exciting to attend as I get to hear what vendors are saying about their latest innovations directly to competitors and industry analysts, rather than only to potential customers.

The result is an open, dynamic discussion that delves deeply into underlying issues that don't usually come to the surface during typical sales events. This year at COFES 2018 I felt that the Tech Suites headliners were two -- Onshape, and Solidworks with xDesign – plus one more, the surprise change at the top of Spatial.

Onshape vs xDesign

It seems to me that many agree that Jon Hirschtick, a co-founder of Onshape, is one of the most charismatic figures in the modern CAD world. The packed audience of Onshape’s Tech Suite was proof of this. But this is not the only reason why I think OnShape has won over Solidworks xDesign.

Today, the Onshape brand has a lot to boast about. It is a full-scale MCAD system, a top-notch "no files - no problems" policy with a single cloud database, thousands of users, its own app store with 51 partner applications, and tons of other reasons to transfer over from other MCAD systems. After creating and dominating the desktop MCAD market with Solidworks, Hirschtick created and dominated a whole new segment in the MCAD market as other major players are rushing to develop their cloud solutions as well. This is somewhat reminiscent of Tesla, isn't it?

So then what does that make Solidworks xDesign? It is, in fact, a timid attempt to enter the emerging cloud CAD systems market with a raw product that doesn't support even a fraction of Solidworks’ features; how many years will it take to fix this?

Its questionable positioning among other Dassault products isn't helping either:

What is their strategy?

To pull users over from Solidworks?

Even if we try for a second to imagine why someone might get fed up with a best-in-class product for whatever reason, why wouldn't they just switch over to Onshape based on the same Parasolid kernel? (xDesign is based on CGM, which means there are bound to be issues converting old templates.)

So if xDesign is intended to attract new users, things are even worse than I thought, because at COFES I could not find one argument in favor of xDesign. And it's not just me, either! Most people talking about this informally share this opinion.

Spatial vs C3D Labs

Now that we've mentioned software components, let's switch gears. I suppose the biggest surprise during COFES (at least, for me) was the news that Linda Lokay is stepping down as general manager of Spatial. Linda is a prominent figure in the global CAD market, confirmed by receiving the Leadership Award at this year's COFES.

We may never know why she made the decision, but it's not hard to see a growing problem if you talk with Spatial solution users. The company's portfolio offers two geometric modeling kernels. The first of them is ACIS, written by Spatial, with a huge user database. The other is CGM, which is developed by Dassault, and was assigned by its parent company to Spatial to market it. We can't count for certain the number of CGM users, but I suspect there aren’t very many.

What is Spatial's strategy? If the company were independent, there would be no alternative to ACIS: hundreds of customers would bring in good revenue, and the main focus would be on them and developing the product to increase royalties.

But, what if we look at this issue from Dassault's perspective? This French company does not use ACIS, and so revenues from ACIS sales are likely lower than its own platform sales. (End-user products are always more profitable than components.) Plus it has CGM, which a great product, and its development is of crucial importance for Dassault's core business. Transitioning ACIS users to CGM will have a synergetic effect on kernel development and the development of the 3Dexperience platform ecosystem. The only question is: why would ACIS users need this?

Irrespective of future developments, uncertainty about Spatial may play into the hands of its competitors, primarily Siemens PLM and its Parasolid kernel. Apparently, Parasolid is already putting competitive pressure on ACIS, as now most often new influential CAD market players choose Parasolid. For example, OnShape and the even more innovative Sharp3D.

The C3D Labs team might also try to take advantage of this situation. For example, we entered the formerly exclusively ACIS domain as a second 3D kernel for Open Design Alliance's Teigha platform. NanoCAD Plus 10, which will be released very soon, will use our C3D kernel on an equal basis with ACIS in its 3D modeling component.

Oleg Zykov is CEO of C3D Labs.

"Disclaimer: As the CEO of С3D Labs, which specializes in the development of toolkits for the software engineering industry, everything written above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the official position of the company. My opinion cannot be considered fully objective and impartial due to my primary activities."

This article was first posted at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/three-takeaways-from-cofes-2018-oleg-zykov/ and is reprinted with permission.

Jul 16, 2018

At COFES [conference], a guy from McKinsey asked me, "Why would blockchain would have material value over a typical distributed database?" Blockchain is most valuable where the transactions are between parties where there is limited trust and where maintaining a potentially public ledger is beneficial.

To what extent is that the case in CAD design? What exactly would you put in the blockchain?

-- J. P.

There is an issue in CAD revolving around IP [intellectual property] protection. Right now, the solution provided by CAD vendors is a form of design simplification. This function strips out details that a sub-contractor or manufacturer does not need to see.

For example, when a sub-contractor is providing a part that connects to a car engine, the engine designer might strip out the details of the engine's internals, leaving only the connection points for the part -- be it electrical, hydraulic, or mechanical.

The drawback is that this process of simplifying the model takes an extra step, as well as deciding which elements to remove.

If CAD vendors were to use blockchains instead, users could track the individual parts of a model throughout the sub-contracting and manufacturing steps. In theory, if someone were to steal the IP, it could be traced -- in theory. Whether this would work in practice, I do not know -- just as "uneditable" PDF files don't work in practice.

I have worked on a couple of legal cases as an expert consultant where DWG files were alleged to be stolen. Inside DWG files are a few properties that could help prove theft -- but not to the CAD-untrained eyes of lawyers. Integrating blockchain inside DWG and other CAD files would be proof sufficient for a court of law.

This would apply to both MCAD (manufacturing) and AEC (construction of buildings).

(Aurga is a remote controller that sits in the DLSR's hotshoe, connected to the camera with a USB cable. See figure 1. Their app runs on an Android or iOS device, with which you control the camera remotely via a local WiFi connection.)

The software update turned out to be for the Android app. (I had thought it would be a firmware update to the controller unit.) With the update, the app now connects to the controller, showing me information about the camera, in my case a Nikon D3100. The primary purpose of the app is to control the camera, such as changing settings (shutter speed, aperture, photographic modes) and taking pictures, such as in timelapse and multiple-image modes.

With the app working, I found that several remote functions don't work with the D3100, including the all-important live view. (See figure 2.) Live view is where the app shows on the Android screen what the camera lens is seeing. This one flaw dooms the Aurga. If you can't see remotely what the camera is seeing, then there is no point to the Aurga.

Figure 2: Yes, we have no live view.

Not only would live view show the image being captures, but also the settings that affect it, such as how bright or dim the image is. There isn't even a non-live live view, such as a one-time static image updated, say, through a refresh mechanism.

A few other Aurga controls also do not work with the D3100.

The Aurga Web site does not list which functions work with which cameras, and so if you purchase a unit, you are gambling it will work as advertised. Unhappily, the site implies that all functions work with all cameras. (See figure 3.) The only hint of a problem is in the corporate blog, in which Aurga staff indicate that they are getting more functions to work on Sony DSLR cameras -- meaning not all functions work with Sonys, either.

Figure 3: Aurga Web site promoting live few function (emphasis mine)

I suspect the problem lies in which functions the camera manufacturer makes available via the USB connector, and so Aurga programmers have no control over which functions can be controlled by their app. This problem does not, however, absolve the company of failing to warn consumers of reduced functionality.

Aurga is not the only remote camera controllers on the market.

Update from Aurga

24 June 2018

Thanks for your detailed reviews. About the live view features. We are making a list for the functions like:

1. Live View

2. Change Mode

3. Auto Focus

4. Manual Focus

5. Change Focus Area

6. Bulb

7. HDR

8. Shooting

9. Timelapse

10. Focus Stacking (Base on Live view and manual focus)

11. Video

12. View Live View

The list is not finished yet. We are still confirming some models. For some old cameras like Nikon D80, D3000, D3100. They doesn’t support live view natively (on camera LED), Aurga doesn’t support too. Anyway, that is true we have to make the feature more completed on website.

Jun 22, 2018

On Twitter, DEVELOP3D co-founder Al Dean explains why it is a mistake for Autodesk to limit running its generative design software on a cloud service:

So here’s the thing with this. Autodesk’s Generative Design tools run in the cloud, its rationalization being that it needs parallel computation and it needs collaboration.

The issue is that this is going to restrict experimentation -- experimentation that’s vital in both an industrial and an educational context. (It’s unlikely to be made available in Fusion Educational licenses.)

There’s also the fact that Autodesk say they need to recoup the costs of that computation. That’s entirely their decision.

Autodesk’s Generative Design tools run on GPUs, specifically CUDA. GPUs are cheap. Folks could stack out a machine and do the computation on their own hardware -- as they do now for rendering and viz[ulization].

My personal belief is that it’s a huge error on Autodesk’s part, and one that I doubt they’ll correct any time soon. </rant>

Jun 14, 2018

I tend to ignore pleas from Kickstarter, but over the years two pleas did catch my fancy. One was the latest release from the makers of Myst, even though the new game took something like two years to deliver.

The other was more recent, a remote camera controller for DSLR [digital single lens reflex] cameras. It promised a host of functions, which you set from your smartphone, which then passes the commands to the camera through an attached controller. It was only $99 for an early supporter, so why not!

Unlike some other hardware startups on Kickstarter, this one actually shipped and arrived last week. It didn't work, but a firmware update is due soon, so we'll see.

What The Aurga Consists Of

It comes in four parts. (Very little of this explained on the company's Web site, so this can act as a user manual for you.)

Yellow (Battery): This largish black plastic part is basically the battery. It has a microUSB port in the side for charging, a red button on the back for turning it on and off, and four LEDS that report the battery level.

Underneath it has a hot shoe attachment for mounting on the camera's hot shoe, and on top a USB-A port for plugging in the controller.

Red (Controller): The main part is the controller, in silver and black. It plugs into the battery's USB-A port. It has a WiFi antenna for connecting with your smartphone, as well as the electronics for special effects.

On the side, there is a microSD slot for memory cards up to 256GB, and at the front a second USB-A port for connecting the USB cable. Photos can be stored on the camera, as usual, or on the memory card.

It actually has two LEDs that light up, one next to the WiFi logo, a second next to the globe logo. Aurga provides no explanation for the Globe LED; I wonder if it is meant for connecting to the Internet, so that the camera can be operated really remotely?

The controller can be used a card reader. If the photos end up on the microSD card, you can plug the controller into your computer's USB port and copy the photos over.

Green (USB Connection): The USB cable is for controlling the camera. One end connects to the controller, the other end to the camera's USB port.

This cable is included, but it was the wrong kind for me: Aurga supplied a microUSB cable, but my DSLR uses the older miniUSB connector.

The 4th part is the app running on your smartphone, as described later.

How It Works

In summary, you use the smartphone to tell the camera what to do:

The controller receives its instructions from your smartphone.

The controller instructs the camera through the USB connection.

The battery provides power to the controller.

I suppose you could use any 5v power source with a USB-A connector, should the included device run low. In fact, the Aurga does not even need to be mounted on the camera; it only needs to be connected to the camera by a USB cable.

Here is the process to set it up:

Install the Aurga app from the Android or iOS app stores.

Turn on the Aurga power unit by holding the red power button for three seconds.

Wait a half-minute for the Wifi to start up.

On the smartphone, connect the Wifi to the Aurga-xxxx address.

Control the camera with the app on the phone.

What It Does

The kinds of functions the controller can handle depend on the camera model. For instance, my Nikon D3100 apparently does not support live view in the smartphone, something the Aurga Web site does not state. (I say "apparently" because I haven't got the system working; I learned this from Aurga tech support.)

Here is what Aurga is supposed to do:

Control DSLR cameras from 100 feet away

Display live view (see on the phone what the camera is seeing)

Generate effects like

Light trails

Time lapse

Focus stacking

HDR

Shoot with several cameras at once

Much to my disappointment, Aurga isn't working for me. The smartphone is not making the connection with the camera, even after I tried the Aurga app with on different smartphone models with four different releases of Android.

I am working with tech support, and I will update this blog if the device does work.

Jun 12, 2018

While CAD software from USA and Europe gets a lot of free publicity from industry magazines, software from other parts of the world tends to be ignored -- Asia, Russia, Africa, and so on. There is, for instance, a thriving CAD software industry in Japan, but we don't know about it, because the user interfaces are Japanese and it is written to Japanese standards.

Software firms in Russia suffer the Japan problem: UIs written in Russian, and CAD written to Russian standards. Some firms are breaking out of the mold, such as C3D Labs (geometric kernels), LEDAS Group (consulting), and NanoSoft (CAD software).

Nanosoft last week released nanoCAD Mechanica 8.5 CAD software for preparing mechanical documentation but with a twist. It's available in English and it includes some international standards, including ISO and DIN. It comes with

A library of parametric parts, such as for bearings, fasteners, springs, gearboxes, and electric motors.

Calculators for gears, springs, shafts, bearing, and so on.

Plus all the functions of the underlaying nanoCAD Plus 8.5 CAD system, which is like AutoCAD

New in this release are

Specifications, such as for wiring

Lots more parametric parts, such as pulleys, toothed belt drives, gear boxes, tap and gate valves, aviation fasteners, and so on

Jun 07, 2018

As I tried to stay out of the 108F-degree heat of Phoenix earlier this week, I figured out why companies like Uber were testing driverless cars in this part of the world. The Phoenix region offers:

No rain.

No snow.

No pedestrians.

A pure driving environment unencumbered by the problems of the real world.

Take a look at the photo I took from the LRT transit stop in downtown Phoenix, at 1:30pm on a Tuesday afternoon, and notice what is missing. People.

The lack of pedestrians is a benefit to early driver-less car testing, as pedestrians are irrational, in particular by jay-walking, ignoring traffic signals, suddenly reversing their route, and wearing disguises like packages, shopping carts, and large flapping articles of clothing.

The lack of pedestrians is a drawback, as the software doesn't get to learn about them.

During the Siemens PLM Connection Americas 2018 conference, one of the keynote speeches was about a chip from newly-acquired Mentor that handles Level 5 automatic driving (fully independent of humans) but can be throttled back to Levels 4 and 3 (more human intervention needed). In particular, we saw how the system identifies pedestrians. This was supposed to be happy news from the keynote stage, and so the recent killing of a pedestrian by an Uber-operated autonomous Volvo wasn't mentioned.

Uber’s Self-Driving Car Had 6 Seconds to Respond Before Fatal Crash, But Got Confused, Did Nothing

In brief, the Uber software could be set to Smooth (ignore objects in order to brake and swerve less) or Safe (avoid or stop for things that might not be a problem.) In this case, it was set to Smooth, and so ignored the bicycle-camouflaged jaywalker.

Software that performs semi- and fully-autonomous driving has been killing drivers as well, and most often by Tesla cars whose ceo has been championing the fight against AI that could kill us all.

Jun 05, 2018

It was in late 2014 when I received a press release regarding a new 3D printer aimed at children but being funded through Kickstarter. Aiming 3D printers at children had so far failed in the marketplace, as had the marketing war cry, "A 3D printer in every child's bedroom!"

Why target children? The less obvious answer is that the 3D printer can be less sophisticated (ie, cheaper to make), along with the more obvious hope that by snaring them young, the vendor gains a customer for life -- alway a dubious proposition.

I hung onto the press release, because I wanted to see if it would fail. It did, despite a flurry of positive press around the November 2014 announcement.

The company Web site today

Here is the press release in its entirety. I've left out the identifying names. (Emphasis mine.)

3D printing, in the form of the revolutionary 3D Printer, is finally ready for prime time – not to mention play time and study time! Designed BY families FOR families, the 3D Printer aims to make an exciting new technology as commonplace and worry-free as a microwave oven. While not quite “Tea, Earl Grey, Hot”, the D Printer just might be the closest thing on Earth to home-based Star Trek tech.

Currently featured in a high-profile Kickstarter campaign, the 3D Printer is the first such featured device to offer a one-year warranty, FREE lifetime online education, and a family-friendly, child-safe design.

Though 3D printing technology has proven its worth time and time again in recent years, the majority of applications have been in industrial and commercial settings. The 3D Printer is the logical next step in the evolution of 3D printing, seamlessly incorporating this advanced technology into our daily lives by ensuring it's safe, simple to use, and affordable.

To that end, the R&D team behind the 3D Printer made safety a priority in all aspects of the design, beginning with the elegantly rounded, Polycarbonate-ABS injection molded case. There are no confusing and superfluous buttons or screens, no sharp edges or fiddly clamps, no hot plates or wayward lasers to burn tiny hands or damage inquisitive eyes. Instead, a large window illuminated by a cool-running white LED bulb showcases each and every 3D-printed creation as it comes into being, layer by paper-thin layer.

“Sure there are competitive products with flashy laser cutter attachments,” explains one of the Co-Founders behind the 3D Printer, “but as a parent do you really want that in your home? I don't know how many times my son has reached in for a part while it's printing. If that was a laser cutter he would not have a hand!”

The 3D Printer isn't just user-safe, it's environmentally-friendly too. The 3D printing process employs biodegradable print material derived from renewable resources such as corn starch and sugarcane. This material does NOT give off foul-smelling, toxic fumes when the printer is used, making it ideal for home or classroom use. Available in a rainbow of colors at a surprisingly low price, the material comes in the form of thin flexible filaments wound on spools for ease of storage.

The family-oriented team behind the 3D Printer strongly believes in the value of their “baby”; the fact they're offering a one-year warranty with every 3D Printer (no other price-competitive product on Kickstarter or otherwise offers this) means they're in this for the long haul.

The result of the Kickstarter campaign at the end of 2014

In addition, when you purchase a 3D Printer you also gain access to FREE on-line education for life. “We have learned so much along the way through this journey and want other families and kids to benefit,” states a Co-Founder of the company. “What we found frustrating, however, was that we could not find a good on-line educational resource that teaches how to use 3D printers, where to find and/or design images, and so on. Our goal is to create an on-line educational community of learning with training modules, instructional videos, projects for family, friends, kids, and school teachers.” You can't put a price on that kind of knowledge!

Both co-founders share the vision of bringing a learning package centered on the 3D printer into the classroom. It is their hope that teachers will take advantage of this amazing technology to further their learning experience in order to reach the diverse endpoints required in the Board of Education curriculum. For example, a learning module of the grade 4 science curriculum could be developed that exploits the capacities of the 3d printer, allowing students to actually make their own gears and pulleys. “If a picture is worth a thousand words, well then a working model is worth a million!” he explains. “There are many aspects of the curriculum where the 3D Printer could be used to further the learning process from biology to geometry and so much more,” according to him, “and if we are successfully funded in Kickstarter these are the types of things we would do.”

The 3D Printer lists for $799.99 at the company website but in concert with the Kickstarter campaign running until the end of 2014, purchasers can take advantage of a host of special, value-added discounts: the Early Bird at $649, the Kickstarter Special at $699, and the value-infused Kickstarter Bundle that features a trio of 3D Printers plus three spools of printing filament for just $1,999!

For more information on the revolutionary, groundbreaking, family-friendly 3D Printer, please visit the home page and the Kickstarter campaign page .

ABOUT 3D Printer

3D Printer was co-founded by several families inspired by the wealth of opportunities offered by the amazing new world of 3D printing. We believe an affordable, easy to use, and child-safe 3D printer such as 3D Printer should be available to ALL families and should be a vital component of every home and classroom. Our founders have successfully launched new products in Canada and have expertise in product development and fulfilment while our team includes skilled engineers who have spent many years designing and making 3D printers and software.

- - -

The company Web site is down, but its Twitter account is still active, with the last tweet on April 2015. The jurisdictional government reports that the corporation is still "Active" but has "Dissolution Pending" due to "Non-compliance," which I probably is due to failing to file annual reports and so on.

May 31, 2018

In past conference calls, Autodesk liked to trot out the number of pirate users -- 12 million! -- as a sign of the huge upside to forcing its customers onto subscriptions. After all, 12 million as a number is a lot bigger than 2 million -- which is the actual number of customers on permanent licenses that have so far refused to switch. And who knows how accurate the 12 million number is, given Autodesk ceo Andrew Anagnost's statement, "Pirates don’t declare themselves at the door."

The implication was that Autodesk would have within a few years (perhaps as soon as 2020) another 14 million customers paying it a couple of thousand dollars a year. Do the math, and you would have a $28 billion-dollar-a-year company, about 14x larger revenues than today. Not so.

In last week's conference call, Autodesk moderated its earlier claim. Here's what Mr Anagnost says now about converting pirates to his vision:

- - -

I sometimes feel like everybody expects like some quarter I’m going to declare 50,000 net subscriber adds for piracy in the score. You might be waiting a long time to hear that declaration.

This move (with regard to how we address non-paying users in our market) is an ongoing process, basically keeping the run-rate at a relatively nice clip, quarter after quarter after quarter -- well beyond even the FY 2020 goal [when all maintenance subscribers are supposed to be on the new subscription plan]. That’s what some of the companies that have engaged in this, like Adobe and Microsoft, have seen: [converting pirates] has been an ongoing return to the business.

So we have done some new things this quarter:

We rolled out the in-product messaging to the pirate in AutoCAD, and we’re going to roll that out worldwide as time progresses.

We’ve also let some things in our sales force with new lead regeneration and new team.

But there’s no headline around how piracy gets added into our business. It’s going to be one of these thing that actually maintains the business as we move forward.

And like I said many times before, pirates don’t declare themselves at the door.

May 29, 2018

Autodesk ceo Andrew Anagnost describes where he hopes the company will arrive in five years, BIM-wise.

- - -

Our cloud products have become an integral selling point for our EBA [enterprise] customers and usage within our EBA customer base has really taken off. For example, in Q1 [Feb-Apr, 2018], just over half of the monthly active users for BIM 360 were in EBA accounts. This really validates our relevancy at the top of the general contractor market, which is where we focused initially.

From High-end to Mid-market

That success is a strong foundation to build on and we’re now leveraging it in the mid-market contractors.

For example, Miron Construction, an U.S.-based construction company, is deploying some of the most advanced technology available in the construction industry. They use the new BIM 360 project delivery platform to process a change to their building project that [used to add] up to 70 design documents and the potential to add almost $1 million in project costs.

The 70 documents needed review by everyone in the project, which would have taken hundreds of hours to resolve to manual processes with their old digital document management software. But Miron resolve the issue in just a fraction of that time with BIM 360. The project manager also found several additional issues, which never would have been caught with their old document management tool. Now that’s real value delivered on real projects.

The Five-year Plan

...we expect in five years, Autodesk will have moved the building information model across the entire construction process from start to finish.

BIM will become the record of everything it is happening from design to pre-fabrication, to on-site assembly into the final handover of the building to its owner. BIM will become the single source of truth across the full spectrum of design and make processes.

...we intend to go deep on the entire process, just like what’s happened in manufacturing where the model has become the record of the entire process. That’s what’s going to happen in the construction space as well. So we intend to touch every piece of that process.

We’ll do some of that organically with internal development; we’ll do some of that inorganically. But we intend to touch just about every part of that process. We’ll probably stay clear of the ERP [enterprise resource planning] side of the business. But every other part of it -- from pre-construction all the way to field operations -- we’re going to be involved.

May 07, 2018

With Facebook having become a data-slurping, teenage-irresponsible, swear word, who would still want to be associated with it? Lots, when you look at the many Web sites requesting logins through Facebook or Google.

A reader recently wrote me:

Are you familiar with BOTS 101? It’s 3D modeling that doesn’t require coding or visual programming. You simply give it text instructions and it uses AI to create the results. Pretty cool stuff!

It sounded interesting and so I went to take a look. But the only way to get a look was to first sign in with Facebook or Google. No thanks.

Matt Asay (head of developer ecosystem at Adobe) last week wrote an article for The Register excoriating online firms that require Facebook logins. Didn't they know about the third-party data slurping that Facebook tacitly was permitting? Turns out Adobe itself has the Facebook login option.

CAD Vendors Without Facebook Logins

SO I wondered, which CAD vendors are like BOTS 101, requiring a login with Facebook or Google? It turns out that most don't even provide the option, which is excellent news.

Now, it could be that when you log in with the CAD vendor, another firm handles the security and data, slurping it up for sharing with third-parties, who then bombard you with ads for that CAD software.

Nevertheless, here are the ones that I checked and that do not offer Facebook as a login option:

AllPlan (Nemetschek)AnsysARCHLine.XPArcsiteAutodesk

Bentley SystemsBricsys

Cad-schroerConvergent ScienceCorel

Dassault Systemes

GraebertGranta ScienceGraphisoftGstarsoft

Hexagon

IMSI/DesignIntelliCAD Technical Consortium

Frustrum

Kubotek USA (CADkey)

Mecsoft

NanoSoftnTopology

OnShape

PTC

Shapr3DSiemens PLMSolidworks

TechSoft3DTrimble

VectorworksVention.io

ZWSOFT

CAD Vendors Who Offer Facebook Logins

There were only two vendor Web sites of the 35 I visited and attempted to create a new account that offered Facebook (or Google) as a log in option:

Alibre (see below)

Robert McNeel Assoc (see below)

Given the option, log in with your email and a specific password. Never log in with Facebook or Google.